One protester killed; officials plead for calm
Special to the Chronicle, Associated Press, Los Angeles Times
protesters turned deadly Friday with the shooting death of a protester at the Group of Eight summit.
The violence and chaos on the first day of meetings for leaders from the world's richest nations delivered unprecedented gravity to
anti-globalization demonstrations that have become increasingly more crowded and violent over the past two years.
A police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, identified the victim as Carlo Giuliani, 23, a Rome native living in unoccupied
buildings in the center of Genoa, the Associated Press reported. He said Giuliani had a long criminal record that included weapons
and drug charges.
Italy's interior minister Claudio Scajola said the officer who shot the protester did so in self-defense.
Beneath clouds of black smoke and tear gas, the intense riots here Friday at first resembled the other angry but anticipated
confrontations that have accompanied nearly a dozen previous international summits.
With nearly 100 others injured, Friday's death prompted a plea for peace from Italian officials and left many of the more than 100,000
demonstrators dazed.
President Bush and the seven other leaders at the three-day summit issued statements of regret at news of the shooting. Italian
leaders appeared on television to caution protesters from resuming clashes today.
And as news of the death spread through the crowds Friday, protesters appeared to at least temporarily back away from their
demonstrations.
Determined to contain the type of mayhem that started in 1999 at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, Italy dispatched
approximately 20,000 officers outside and beyond the so-called red-zone area where other leaders from Britain, Canada, France,
Germany, Japan, Italy and Russia met U.S. delegates Friday.
Instead, the deadly shooting opened a whole new chapter among previous protests that have spanned nearly a dozen cities, including
other events in Quebec and Goteborg, Sweden.
The protester's death occurred about half a mile due east of the red zone, in an area near the railway station where repeated clashes
occurred. Eyewitnesses gave conflicting accounts that had him being beaten, run over or shot. Police in Italy are not equipped with
rubber-coated or plastic bullets for crowd control, but they do use live ammunition, said police spokesman Mario Viola.
According to eyewitnesses interviewed by Italian state television RAI, the shooting happened after demonstrators hurled football-size
rocks at a police van.
A sequence of Reuters news photos appeared to show the man, hooded and approaching a jeep of the Carabinieri paramilitary police
with a fire extinguisher lifted in his arms, and an officer inside pointing a gun in his direction. Subsequent pictures showed him prone
on the ground, the body lying beneath the jeep.
Some local media reported Giuliani had been sleeping in a gutted building less than a mile from the red zone. But police and
government officials couldn't confirm those reports.
Hours after the death, protesters created a makeshift shrine, heaping red flowering plants they uprooted from a nearby public garden.
A piece of notebook paper, weighed down with a tear gas canister, was scrawled with the words, "Made in G8."
"This shows that the police's famous `zero tolerance' policy toward us is just an excuse for them to murder," said a member of a
Naples-based anti-globalization group called Adesso. She asked to be identified only as Nicola.
Adesso and most of the other protest groups in Genoa are part of a 700-group umbrella organization called the Genoa Social Forum,
which was created to protest against issues such as free trade, global warming and developing world debt.
A source within the paramilitary Carabinieri police said at least 90 people had been injured Friday, including 35 law enforcement
officials and four journalists. Police reported 80 arrests.
Only a small minority of protesters took part in the violence - and often they brought shields, helmets and black masks in preparation.
Some demonstrators pleaded with the most violent ones to stop.
At one point, part of the international press center was closed for nearly an hour Friday as army personnel investigated a "suspicious
package" near the Japanese media area that they feared might contain a bomb. Those concerns turned out to be groundless.
Elsewhere, protesters burned at least two dozen cars and blocked streets with trash dumpsters. In a dynamic display of force that was
shown on national television, armored police vehicles crashed through the barriers.
At one point, protesters pushed within two blocks of the Palazzo Ducale where Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the other
leaders held their meetings. But activities subsided after news of the shooting death spread.
"I regret what happened," Berlusconi said in a statement. "It is contrary to the efforts, the work the G8 has carried forward to combat
poverty and world epidemics."
Residents of the lower-security "yellow zone" - just outside the red zone - were left Friday night with neighborhoods strewn with broken
glass, overturned garbage cans and burned cars.
"If you ask me, the G-8 organizers asked for something like this to happen," said Giancarlo Bindi, the owner of one of the only cafes left
open in the yellow zone. "They knew these people would come, so it's as if they invited them and then shut them out. What did they
expect?"
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