|
|
|
|
|
TITLE: Swiss Police Urge Activists to Stay Away |
AUTHOR: |
PUB: Reuters |
DATE: January 25, 2001 |
|
Swiss police urged even peaceful protesters to stay away from the annual World Economic Forum business summit in Davos this week for fear they could fuel violent anti-globalization clashes.Hundreds of activists opposed to the increasingly intense integration of global commerce have vowed to be on hand on Saturday to demonstrate against the WEF annual meeting, which brings together the world's business and political elite."There are peaceful demonstrators who are always welcome here. But on Saturday there is a ban on demonstrations and therefore I call on peaceful protesters not to come to Davos," Peter Aliesch, the head of police in the Swiss canton of Grisons, told Reuters Video News."They are simply supporting indirectly those who want to cause a riot. Violence does not serve the world's poorest, it only harms people in Davos," he said Wednesday. Swiss officials are mounting a massive security operation to protects heads of state and business executive among the 3,200 participants. But fears of violent outbursts prompted the State Department to caution Americans to steer clear of Davos. Aliesh said police reinforcements from across the country and from federal agencies would be on hand in the Alpine ski resort in what he called the tightest security operation Switzerland had seen in 20 or 30 years."We are trying to ensure there are no riots, but no police force in the world can guarantee this," he said. Security officials aim to keep groups bent on violence from reaching Davos. Participants will run a gauntlet of checkpoints and controls set up along the limited number of access roads to Davos, Europe's highest city.Critics of Davos see the meeting from January 25 to 30 as a capitalist conspiracy to set a fat-cat world agenda behind closed doors. Eager to dispel this view, organizers of the event in its 31st year say they have given representatives of trade unions, non-governmental organizations, environmentalists and other critics of the system unprecedented exposure this year.In an unusual move by the Swiss government, some 300 known foreign trouble-makers have been banned from entering the country. END |