Police battle anti-Bush protesters in S. Korea

Violence erupted as police barricaded roads and trained water cannons on activists trying to reach a convention center in Busan, South Korea where US President George W. Bush and other leaders from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies were meeting on Nov. 18. Thousands of activists had taken to the streets of Busan to denounce APEC, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Bush. Outside BEXCO, the venue of the APEC summit, about 15,000 students, farmers and union workers, hurling rocks and wielding steel pipes, fought with police preventing them from marching on the forum venue. Angry demonstrators burned an effigy of Bush. Farmers chanted anti-US slogans while waving colorful banners reading "No APEC, No Bush" and "Terrorist Bush go home." Police repelled the assaults with shields and by firing high-pressure sea water cannons at them. S. Korea protest A handful of riot police officers were taken away by ambulance with injuries from rocks thrown by the protesters, some the size of a volleyball, police said. Police also said 11 officers were injured when they fell from the containers that were moved by protesters attempting to break through a barricade. Under a barrage of water, the protesters fastened a rope to several shipping containers and pulled them out of the line. At least a couple of police helicopters buzzed overhead, while the crowd chanted, "No Bush! No APEC!" Protesters said they were angry at the South Korean government's plans to open its rice market to cheap foreign imports, a measure backed by the free-trade APEC forum as well as the WTO. "We oppose rice opening," chanted the farmers, some of whom had tears in their eyes as their voices rang out. Organizers said police had turned back busloads of people on highways before they even got to Busan. Nearly 46,000 police were deployed in and around the summit. Police had transformed the port city into a virtual fortress by erecting a ring of steel barriers across a wide perimeter around the summit convention center. Later on after the clashes subsided demonstrators listened to speeches and danced and sang in the streets. Earlier at the start of one of the protests, about 3,000 farmers, some dressed in traditional white Korean funeral clothes, held a memorial ceremony for one of two farmers who killed themselves in recent days by drinking herbicide, leaving suicide notes blaming plans to liberalize the domestic rice market. "What she wanted to tell us by dying was to fight," Yoon Geum-soon, head of the Coalition of Women Farmers, said of the latest suicide victim. "We will fight, we will crush APEC, we will crush WTO, we will kick out Bush." "The government is trying to kill the farmers. If we open the rice market, all farmers are going to die," said Lee Byung-kwan, 72, a farmer from Jinju. At another protest that later converged with the farmers, about 1,000 laborers burned a coffin that had "APEC" written on it. "Rural communities are facing collapse as rice imports are being forced upon them," opposition lawmaker Dan Pyung-ho said at the event. Clashes had erupted at a protest in Seoul earlier that week where some 12,000 farmers confronted a nearly equal number of riot police, and the activists had vowed to bring their fight to APEC. Chanting anti-US and anti-APEC slogans, farmers hurled rocks and beat riot police with steel pipes and sticks near the National Assembly on Nov. 15 in a three-hour battle after a rally opposing free trade policies. South Korean police said that 53 farmers had been detained for questioning after the protests left some 130 police and farmers injured. Protesters also burned three police buses and a large painting showing President Bush thrusting a knife into a rice bag. Leaders at the two-day APEC summit were working to revive a round of WTO talks that have stalled due to resistance to measures to liberalize global agricultural trade. Although trade dominated the conference, bird flu was also a major issue. The combined 21 APEC economies, from the US to Japan, China and Australia, represent 57 percent of the global economy.