- The Observer,
- Sunday February 16 2003
Millions marched through more than 300 cities in over 60 countries. Their banners displayed common sentiments of blaming America, Britain and the oil industry for planning war. Some protests were huge, with more than a million people turning out in London and Rome.
Hundreds of thousands joined in marches in 20 French cities, with the biggest crowd marching to the Place de la Bastille in Paris. In Toulouse, marchers walked in the cold winter sunshine under banners reading, 'No blood in the oil', and 'No to war for petrol'.
Tens of thousands also gathered in Berlin, including a former British soldier. Martin Bentley, 47, bearer of the Military Medal for bravery, was with his two daughters aged nine and 14. Bentley, who served in the British Army for 17 years, seeing action in Cyprus, the Falklands and Northern Ireland, said: 'I am not against military intervention where it is justified, but there is no reason for this at all.'
In Italy organisers said more than a million people marched through Rome. Rainbow-coloured peace flags hung from the walls of the Colosseum. The protest was led by Italian cinema heroes Roberto Benigni and Nanni Moretti, left-wing opposition politicians and human rights groups. Flags swayed over silenced crowds as a minute-long air raid siren, a symbolic 'echo of war', blasted across Rome at the height of the march.
But in Greece protests turned violent when police fired tear gas and clashed with anarchist protesters who smashed windows and threw a petrol bomb at the offices of an Athens newspaper. There were protests in all European countries, but some had poor turnouts. In Moscow, where the government has taken a strong anti-war line, only 400 protested, marching from Russia's Foreign Ministry to the US embassy.
An astonishing display of global people power saw similar sentiments echoed from Bulgaria to Japan. 'I look at Bush but see Hitler,' proclaimed the banner of a protester in Sofia. Members of the Save Childhood Movement joined demonstrations in the Indian capital Delhi.
Yet the one area of the world that failed to protest was the Middle East and the Gulf. Apart from some peaceful demonstrations in Bahrain and Yemen recently, there have been virtually no marches in the conservative Gulf Arab region, where people need permission to take to the streets.
The relative calm in the region was an irony not lost on some newspaper commentators. In al-Bayan newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, one leader said: 'The people of the world and more than one million Europeans demonstrate against an attack on Iraq while the Arab people and their leaders are in a deep coma.'
