Once again George Bush found himself in the midst of street violence. This time, of course, it is South Korea where the Prez was attending the APEC summit.
Thousands of farm activists and union workers hurled bottles in a clash with police near a meeting of Pacific Rim leaders on Friday in Pusan. Participants in the rallies chanted slogans like "No Bush, No APEC, No Rice Market Opening and No WTO."
Thousands more never made it to the protest as organizers reported police had blocked busloads of people from even entering Pusan. Still others were prevented from even getting on the buses to begin with.
The clash broke out about a mile from the convention center where leaders from 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies were meeting.
As the day wore on protestors converged towards the bridge connecting the city to the area where the summit was being held. Here they were met by thousands of riot police (a total of 30,000 were deployed in all apparently) with a barricade of buses and shipping containers. Some pitched battles broke out between the bamboo-spear wielding farmers and the riot police, who began to respond with water cannon. Riot police wielding 3-metre-long metal pipes attacked the demonstrators and angry protestors responded by using ropes to pull the shipping containers from the barricades and into the sea. The fighting went on after dark.
Organizer of the rally planed to hold protest on Saturday in Busan when the APEC leaders hold second retreat at "Nurimaru" APEC House in the Dongbaek Island in southern Busan. Nurimaru means peak of the world in Korean.
South Korean farmers attended the rallies to protest their government's plan to open wider its rice market to foreign imports under a World Trade Organization-imposed deal.
Early this week, hundreds of farmers and policemen were wounded in Seoul clashes. Sources: People’s Daily (China), Prensa Latina, Kotaji, Simply Left Behind
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