G8 summit security war game rapped

Campaigners have condemned the massive security arrangements for the ongoing G8 summit in Northern Ireland amid peaceful protests.

This comes as hundreds of complaints were filed by the public about police brutality and excessive use of violence, that led to the death of a protester during London’s G20 protests on April 1 and April 2, 2009.

On Monday, around 2,000 anti-G8 demonstrators held a peaceful march to a defensive fence around the venue of the G8 summit at Lough Erne Golf Resort.

The protest rally did not result in any physical confrontation or arrests but the police were there in their thousands with water cannons, patrol boats and riot gear fully ready to suppress any demonstrators who dared to engage officers to let their voices of protest be heard.

Eamonn McCann, of the People Before Profit campaign group, slammed the scale of the security arrangements.

“We are not negative, it is they who are negative, it’s them who have to have 7,000 armed personnel to defend them with a ring of steel. What a farce,” he told the demonstrators.

The police have set up a four-mile steel barrier at a two-mile distance from the resort with another barrier of razor wire surrounding the steel fence to defend the summit that will close on Tuesday.

The force have also laid aside 260 improvised prison cells for a potential surge in arrests keeping sixteen judges on standby during the summit to hold summary hearings for detained demonstrators.

However, amid the security war game, the gathering of anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-globalization and anti-tax evasion groups went ahead without incident except for an episode when some 20 marchers passed the razor wire barrier to get closer to the summit venue though they withdrew when issued with verbal warnings by the police.

The protest rally featured placards, banners and a replica of a bomb carrying the words “Drop Debt Not Bombs”.

Protesters also chanted against the G8 leaders’ involvement in conflicts around the world, their hawkish policies in countries like Syria and their failure to hold major international corporations to account over tax evasion.