Scuffles, tear gas at end of G7 protest

Police and protesters have clashed in Sicily near a meeting of the Group of Seven nations.

کد خبر: ۶۹۸۳۹۱

تاریخ: ۰۷ خرداد ۱۳۹۶ - ۱۲:۱۹

A group of protesters have tried to break through a police cordon at the end of a protest march against world leaders meeting in Sicily, scuffling with security forces, who fired tear gas to disperse them.

After hundreds of people peacefully marched on Saturday through the seaside town of Giardini Naxos, downhill from where a Group of Seven meeting was held, a group of about 100 people peeled off and challenged riot police.

When they tried to flank them by running along the beach, police charged and fired tear gas. Protesters washed their eyes out with water and an ambulance appeared to take away at least one injured person.

Italy had massive security measures in place for the protesters who accused world leaders of ignoring the interests of ordinary people.

Though some 3500 were expected to turn up, the actual turnout appeared to be about half of that.

Salvatore Giordano, a Sicilian high school professor, blamed the low turnout of in part on heavy security.

"They are criminalising our dissent," Giordano said. "We're pacifists. We're not here to break windows, but to protest against Sicily being turned into a giant aircraft carrier for the world's military powers."

US President Donald Trump and the heads of Italy, France, Britain, Germany, Canada and Japan had been meeting in Taormina, which sits on a rocky hilltop just north of Giardini Naxos.

Bus loads of police lined the route of the march in what is normally a sleepy town of beachgoing tourists, while a police helicopter circled above.

Giordano came to air his opposition to the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS), part of an ultra-fast satellite communications network for the American military that he says poses a health risk to people living near the infrastructure.

Alessandro D'Alessandro, the coordinator of Sicily's communist party, said there had been a media campaign of fear against the protesters, which kept numbers low.

"It was hard to get here," D'Alessandro said. "But we came to tell the world's most powerful people that we oppose their military and capitalistic world view. We're here to defend the interests of the weakest."