Anti-G7 protests in Geneva started in a carnival atmosphere on Sunday before turning violent, with building facades smashed and police firing tear gas at masked youths.
The day started quietly: before the parade, people gathered in a park overlooking Lake Geneva to find shade in the hot afternoon sun and meet their arriving friends.
The atmosphere was festive, with people singing and dancing as they put the final touches on the placards, which read slogans such as “G7 = racket, make anti-imperialism great again.”
Marco, 36, who lives in Geneva, is among those with a positive spirit.
“When everyone is reading depressing news on their phones, this is an opportunity to see that the left is still here and may even be making a comeback,” he told AFP.
The “G7” umbrella alliance representing various causes held demonstrations in the Swiss city to protest against the G7 summit near Evian, France.
“I haven’t protested for a long time,” said Claude, a 65-year-old retiree from La Chaux-de-Fonds in northwestern Switzerland. “There is an urgent need to protest now.”
He added that he took part in the march “to protest against the assassins of humanity.”
– Cars on fire, buildings attacked –
Several bands also took part, some playing brass instruments, some playing Latin rhythms, and people chanted and danced as the demonstrations marched through the northern half of the city.
Many shop fronts along the route were boarded up and graffiti was spray-painted on the plywood.
Geneva police said that about 20,000 people participated; the vast majority behaved well and did not participate in any violent acts.
But along the way came a number of masked and hooded people, many dressed in black. Police said about 600 so-called “black group” hardcore demonstrators joined the crowd.
Shortly after the demonstration began, a Tesla vehicle caught fire.
Some firecrackers were thrown at lines of riot police, many of whom had been recruited from other parts of Switzerland.
The march was halted as demonstrators lit flares amid a sustained attack on the Geneva offices of professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. Several attempts were made to hit the windows with boards, metal blinds were torn off and glass was smashed.
Red and white barricades were used to try to smash security cameras on the building’s porch.
Police responded quickly with tear gas, sending people running back towards oncoming protesters, ducking through hedges into private gardens or seeking shelter in alleys to rinse their eyes.
-Long confrontation-
Along the way, some people put stickers on road signs to welcome refugees.
Later, several glass panels surrounding a memorial to UNHCR staff who died serving refugees were also damaged and spray-painted with graffiti. The streets were strewn with rubble.
The front door of the nearby United Nations telecommunications agency, the International Telecommunications Union, was smashed.
As the march returned to the park where it started, tram stops were smashed and flares were thrown at police, who fired several rounds of tear gas.
As the standoff continued, a rubbish bin on the road was set on fire.
Police kept the demonstrators in the park, and as the sky began to darken, tired-looking protesters began to leave.
Geneva cantonal police said they had arrested “several people”, adding after sunset that “no injuries have been reported so far”.
“As for property damage, it remains limited given the sheer number of damaging elements identified,” it added.
As the protests ended, the G7 alliance said, “The spirit of Geneva is on our side, the spirit of freedom and human rights.
“We were able to send a message of unity and hope to the world.”
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This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
