In Germany, mass protests have already begun ahead of this week’s G8 meeting of the world’s richest nations. On Saturday, as many as 80,000 demonstrators filled the streets of Rostock. The march was peaceful, but after it ended, bloody clashes broke out between police and some protesters. Demonstrators accused police of using excessive force and provoking the street fights. At least 128 protesters were arrested. Protest organizers said over 500 demonstrators had been injured. Police said over 400 officers were also hurt.

Tim Laumeyer, a spokesperson for the protesters: “The people are scared of the police and what will happen now. We had more than 500 injured demonstrators, and there are fears that some police units will do their own thing again or that the police will not stick to their de-escalation tactic, and people are afraid of that. And so I don’t think that we shall be seeing riot scenes to the same extent in the next few days.”

Meanwhile, hundreds of activist organizations and NGOs from the around the globe are gathering in Germany for the G8 conference.

Walden Bello, of Focus on the Global South: “The G8 must go into history now. We do not need the G8. What we really need are truly international people’s organizations to be able to meet the challenges of these times.”

Oxfam’s Max Lawson criticized how the G8 nations deal with Africa.

Max Lawson: “What we want to demonstrate is that the G8 are gambling with lives of millions of Africans. Two years ago, they made promises at their summit in Gleneagles in Scotland to increase aid to Africa. Two years later, countries like Germany, Italy, France, they have just not delivered on those promises, and that means they are gambling away lives of millions of women and children, desperately poor in Africa, who need this money from rich countries.”

President Bush’s proposal for a new climate change strategy that rejects setting mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions has also been criticized ahead of the G8 meeting.

Michael Frein, of the Justice Now Campaign: “What Bush is trying to achieve with his initiative is to gain time. He is distracting people by saying, ’You’re all invited, and we will then talk about specific issues.’ In fact, he is perfectly able to talk about specific issues. There is a United Nations process where just that is being negotiated, and he doesn’t want to participate in it.”