Protesters opposed to lowering trade barriers swung bamboo sticks at police Saturday and tried to storm a convention center where World Trade Organization delegates were negotiating a global accord on farming, manufacturing and services. At least 70 people were injured.
Security forces scattered the crowd with tear gas and pepper spray, and 900 people were detained after the worst street violence in Hong Kong in decades. The injured included 10 police officers.
The protesters included South Korean farmers, Southeast Asian groups and activists from the United States and Europe. They are concerned that WTO efforts to open up global markets will enrich wealthy nations at the expense of poor and developing countries.
Actually, of course, they have this exactly backwards.
Daniel Drezner is blogging from the middle of all this: “The result is that I’ve spent this evening looking at policemen sheathed in protest gear — gas masks, body-length Plexiglas shielding, truncheons, etc. — while drinking and dining at the hotel buffet along with a healthy number of WTO delegates. It’s more than a bit surreal.”
He adds, however: “The truly bizarre thing is that, having ventured out earlier in the evening, I’m quite certain that the number of curious onlookers outnumbers the actual protestors, the press contingent outnumbers the protestors, and the police most definitely outnumber the protestors. The Korean protestors are certainly causing inconveniences beyond their numbers, but this is a much smaller contingent of activists than were present at either Seattle in 1999 or Cancun in 2003. And any press report suggesting otherwise is full of it.”
Nice to know. And as Drezner notes, Hong Kong blogger Simon World has much, much more on the topic.
MORE: Stephen Spruiell was there, and reports of the protests: “It was one of the most appalling things I’ve ever witnessed.”