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 News from Around the Americas | March 2006 
Thousands Protest War's 3rd Anniversary
 Sara Lin & Deborah Schoch - Los Angeles Times
| | Several thousand people marked the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by protesting in Hollywood. The mother and daughter above are waiting for the start of the march, which included a contingent of Mothers for Peace. (Scott Galindez/TruthOut) |
From Australia to Hollywood, people march to demand that troops be withdrawn.
While some brought anti-war placards and petitions to Hollywood on Saturday, a group called Veterans for Peace crafted 100 flag-draped coffins from cardboard cartons and carried them down Sunset Boulevard to mark the more than 2,300 US troops killed in the Iraq war.
At MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, the American Friends Service Committee laid out 240 pairs of boots, each bearing the name of a fallen soldier from California.
And in San Francisco, protesters dressed as members of President Bush's cabinet and carried signs that read "United World Not United States" and "Stop US Imperialism."
Worldwide, demonstrations started Saturday with 500 people chanting anti-war slogans in Sydney, Australia, and rolled around the world, with major protests in Pakistan, London and the United States, where more than 1,000 people gathered in New York's Times Square.
As many as 3,000 demonstrators were expected today in Seoul. South Korea has the third-largest contingent of foreign troops in Iraq, behind the US and Britain. Another protest is planned outside the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur, the largest city in Malaysia.
In California on Saturday, thousands of people took part in activities to show their opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq that began three years ago and to call for a pullout of American troops.
As he sat in MacArthur Park next to a worn pair of black boots with a tag bearing his son's name, Fernando Suarez del Solar, 50, addressed the crowd in English and Spanish to encourage more Latinos to participate in the anti-war movement. A large image of his son was propped up behind him.
"My son died, and anything I do here will not bring him back ... but I think I can save other children," he said. Suarez del Solar's son was one of the first Marines killed in the war.
Gary Russell, 61, noted that the crowd at the park was small and that not many people were heading to Hollywood to listen to speeches there.
"I agree this march is not big - not like the massive marches we had in the '60s - but in time it will happen," Russell said.
Later in the day, several thousand people marched in Hollywood to an area near the Kodak Theatre. Among them was Pablo Martin, who said he was joining an anti-war march for the first time. Martin, 32, of Los Angeles shouldered the corner of a prop coffin as he marched down Sunset Boulevard.
"I just got tired of not doing anything," he said. "I think we've all been duped, and the young, the poor, the minorities are taking the brunt of it."
Several of the protesters said they are growing discouraged at the length of the war.
"I don't see any possible way for it to end any time soon," said Flo Webster, 73, of Woodland Hills, who held up a hand-drawn sign reading "Grandmothers for Peace," decorated with photos of her four grandchildren.
Those who addressed the crowd included Paul Haggis, who received two Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre this month for the best picture winner, "Crash." He won for original screenwriting and was one of the producers honored for the film.
"This is my first time back to the Kodak Theatre since March 5 and I couldn't be prouder to be with all of you," Haggis said.
Actor Martin Sheen, who plays US President Josiah Bartlet in the television series "The West Wing," drew some of the loudest cheers with his call to end the war.
"Let my country awake," he concluded, quoting India's first Nobel laureate, the late Rabindranath Tagore.
After Sheen's speech, Vietnam War veteran Edward Smith, 56, who opposes the war in Iraq, leaned over a metal guardrail and called out to Sheen, "Why isn't anyone up there talking about the troops?"
Sheen paused to talk to Smith, pointing out the makeshift coffins carried by the protesters. "We want them home safely," Sheen said of the troops.
In San Francisco, protesters danced in the streets and beat drums.
"It's very painful to me that our country is doing this and killing innocent people," said Joan Emerson, 70, of Mill Valley, who attended with the group Old Lesbians Organizing for Change. "I'm against all war, and I'm very concerned that I'm responsible as an American citizen for this kind of thing happening."
Persis Karim, 33, said she was concerned that the United States might launch a preemptive strike on Iran.
"They may not do it in quite the same way as Iraq," said Karim, a professor at San Jose State University. "But the agenda of the Bush administration is to secure the region, and obviously Iran is a problem to them."
Anti-War Rallies Mark Iraq Anniversary
Paul Burkhardt - Associated Press
New York - Thousands of anti-war protesters took to the streets around the world Saturday, marking the third anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq with demands that coalition troops leave immediately.
Wael Musfar of the Arab Muslim American Federation addressed more than 1,000 people who gathered in Times Square near a military recruiting station, which was guarded by police.
"We say enough hypocrisy, enough lies, our soldiers must come home now," Musfar said from a parked flatbed truck. Participants chanted, "Stop the US war machine, from Iraq to Korea to the Philippines."
Many attendees emphasized that they support the troops. "I have friends in Iraq and I just want them to know that I may not be able to support them there, but I can here," said Jose Avila, 36.
Protesters in Chicago marched down Michigan Avenue to a Saturday night rally at downtown's Daley Plaza. Police estimated that more than 7,000 people took part, but said there were no arrests.
"I'm against this war, I'm against the torture," said protester Martha Conrad, 54, of Chicago. "We're doing this for the people of Iraq."
One bystander, with a red, white and black Iraqi flag flung across his shoulders, said he came to show he backed President Bush's policies in Iraq. "I support freeing Iraqis from tyranny," said 33-year-old Ryan Stiles of Chicago.
Protests also were held in Australia, Asia and Europe, but many events were far smaller than organizers had hoped. In London, police said 15,000 people joined a march from Parliament and Big Ben to a rally in Trafalgar Square. The anniversary last year attracted 45,000 protesters in the city.
"We are against this war, both for religious reasons and on a humanitarian basis, too," said Imran Saghir, 25, a Muslim student who attended the London rally.
Britain, the United States' strongest supporter in the Iraq war, has about 8,000 troops in Iraq but plans to pull out 800 of them by May. The British military has reported 103 deaths there. More than 2,300 American troops have died in the war, which began three years ago Sunday.
In Washington, a protester wearing a Bush mask and bearing fake blood on his hands waved to passing automobiles outside Vice President Dick Cheney's residence, where about 200 people demonstrated against the war.
Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler of the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ said the rallies nationwide are a "tapestry of resistance."
"Most people believe we aren't crazy anymore," he said.
In Concord, N.H., nearly 300 peace activists marched about a mile from a National Guard armory to the Statehouse.
"I feel a huge sense of betrayal that I went and risked my life for a lie," said Joseph Turcott, 26, a former Marine who served in the invasion.
Other US cities where protesters gathered Saturday included Boston and San Francisco.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld answered critics of the war in a guest column in Sunday's editions of The Washington Post, asserting that if Americans were to turn away from Iraq, it would be "the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis."
"It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn't have the patience to work with them as they built free countries," he wrote.
Rumsfeld cited rising voter participation in successive Iraqi elections, support for security forces shown by Sunni religious leaders once sympathetic to the insurgency, and rising competence of Iraqi troops as evidence of progress since the invasion three years ago.
"The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq," he said.
In demonstrations in several cities worldwide, protesters carried posters showing pictures of Bush, calling him the "World's No. 1 terrorist."
In Turkey, where opposition to the war cuts across all political stripes, about 3,000 protesters gathered in Istanbul, police said. "Murderer USA," read a sign in Taksim Square.
In Stockholm, Sweden, about 1,000 demonstrators gathered for a rally and march to the US Embassy. One protester was dressed as the hooded figure shown in an iconic photograph from the Abu Ghraib prison.
In Copenhagen, Denmark, more than 2,000 demonstrators marched from the US Embassy to the British Embassy, demanding the withdrawal of 530 Danish troops from southern Iraq.
On Sunday, up to 3,000 protesters were expected in Seoul, South Korea, which has the third-largest contingent of foreign troops in Iraq after the US and Britain.
Britain's defense chief earlier urged demonstrators in London to support the Iraqi people and condemn terrorism.
"When people go on the streets of London today, I do wish just occasionally they would go out in support of the United Nations, the Iraqi people and the Iraqi democrats and condemn terrorists," Defense Secretary John Reid told British Broadcasting Corp. radio during a visit to Iraq.
Members of the Stop the War Coalition, the organizers of the London march, had little sympathy for Reed's remarks.
"Every day you hear of new deaths. Tony Blair has actually made Iraq a worse place for the Iraqi people," said Rose Gentle, whose soldier son Gordon, 19, was killed by a roadside bomb last year in Basra, southern Iraq. |
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