Japan - An estimated 3,000 demonstrators protesting the upcoming Group of
Eight summit marched through downtown Sapporo, flooding the main commercial
thoroughfare and pushing back teeming police lines during ongoing clashes.
Police arrested four or five men during the march. Police shattered the
window of truck carrying loudspeakers and dragged out the driver of the
vehicle when he refused to open the door for them. Two others were dragged
off the back of the same truck.
A foreign cameraman working for Reuters news service was also taken away,
but it is unclear whether or not he was also arrested.
At the summit, heads of state will discuss international free trade,
greenhouse gas emissions, the "development" of Africa, and food and oil
prices.
In the days to come, anti-G8 activists will be holding a counter-summit and
convening at protest camps to come up with strategies for implementing
global food security, just labor standards, and environmental
sustainability. These solutions, many activists say, will be significantly
different than those coming from the G8 summit that will begin on Monday at
a luxury resort near Lake Toya, south of Sapporo.
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