GENOA, Italy (From Wire Reports) – After three days of compliments from his guests at the protest-besieged summit meeting, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was heckled as soon as he set foot beyond the 13-foot-high metal and concrete walls encircling the world leaders.
Mr. Berlusconi, criticized at home and abroad for his handling of the protests, went from the summit Sunday to tour neighborhoods battered by rioting. Some residents stuck their heads out of apartment windows and yelled at him, “Shame! Shame!”
Much of the anger Mr. Berlusconi sampled stemmed from a pre-dawn police raid Sunday morning at the headquarters of the protest’s coordinators, Genoa Social Forum. Police seized computer files and rousted protesters from their sleep and beat them, sending 24 to hospitals, witnesses said.
“They made us lie on the floor,” Caroline Terzaghi, 38, a protest organizer, told reporters. “They were throwing computers around. They were hitting everyone. There was blood everywhere.”
Italian television showed scenes of stunned, bloodied protesters being taken out of their building on stretchers, as well as shots of corridors splattered with glass shards and smears of blood.
Ninety-three protesters were arrested at the school and charged with possession of firebombs and with criminal association to commit vandalism. Police later displayed several sledgehammers, Swiss Army knives, a pickax and black hoods they said they seized in the raid.
Amnesty International protested the crackdown. Mr. Berlusconi said the forum was sheltering violent anarchists at the school.
Italian television showed scenes of stunned, bloodied protesters being taken out of their building on stretchers, as well as shots of corridors splattered with glass shards and smears of blood.
Aside from the police raid, Genoa was quiet Sunday after two days of violence that left one protester dead, 500 injured and 178 under arrest. Workers took down tall steel-mesh barricades protecting summit venues in the city’s medieval center and port.
Outside the top-security zone, they began clearing broken glass, spent tear gas canisters, downed road signs and hulks of burned vehicles from routes where a few thousand violent anarchists drew 20,000 riot police into clashes with the mass of peaceful protesters.
Meanwhile, the Group of Eight leaders took steps Sunday to blunt criticism by the 100,000 protesters who converged in Genoa. A declaration closing the summit vowed to wage a joint attack on Third World poverty and disease.
The G-8 leaders pledged in their communique “to make globalization work for all our citizens and especially the world’s poor.”
The most concrete step was a new global health fund to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in poor countries, with an initial $1.3 billion in contributions. The sum fell short of the $7 billion to $10 billion target proposed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Other initiatives came without specific funding pledges. They include new technology to breach the “digital divide” between rich and poor countries and a special development plan for Africa.
G-8 summits themselves have come under fire as extravagant. They started as low-key discussions among the Group of Seven leaders in 1975. Russia started attending after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. By then, the gatherings were becoming mega-conferences; 2,000 official delegates came to Genoa.
Italy spent $120 million to spruce up the city and $25 million to protect the summit. Now it faces an estimated bill for $18 million in damage.
With that in mind, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien announced that next year’s summit on June 26-28 in Canada will be held at a mountain resort in Kananaskis park, 40 miles west of Calgary.
The remote locale, he said, would discourage mass protests and revive the informality of early gatherings. Each country’s delegations will be limited to no more than 35 people. Mr. Chretien brought the idea to Genoa, and the other leaders quickly accepted it over dinner Saturday.
The decision prompted charges that the G-8 leaders are isolating themselves further from critics in a global network of advocacy groups.
“Everyone feels the G-8 has to continue,” Mr. Berlusconi said at the summit’s closing news conference. “You have to distinguish between peaceful dialogue and violent protest. There is no possibility for dialogue with these troublemakers.”
The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.
