May Day Protests Turn Violent in Germany

Leftists set fires and hurled rocks, bottles and insults at police in May Day protests over authorities’ refusal to allow them to march against far-right extremists, as violence racked Germany on a day otherwise devoted to celebrating splendid spring weather and a day off from work.

More than 500,000 Germans took part in the rallies and riots that have become rituals of the European holiday, which in recent years has come to symbolize the common workers’ struggle against big business and globalization.

In London, several thousand demonstrators thronged the rainy streets to protest everything from animal cruelty to Third World debt, giving voice to myriad grievances while mostly abstaining from the rampages that marred last year’s observances.

About 40 protesters were arrested when demonstrators became angry after police herded them into Oxford Circus and kept them in the intersection for several hours in the driving rain.

Traditional parades in proletarian bastions such as Moscow drew dispirited crowds nostalgic for the impoverished stability of the Communist era, but the holiday has largely been hijacked by Western leftists who see it as a fitting time and festive venue for venting.

Tensions in the German capital rose before the sun did. Radicals fueled by alcohol and anger attacked police in suburban Friedrichshain, setting fire to cars and wooden construction fences. Police doused the marchers with water cannons and arrested 40 people, the city’s Interior Ministry reported.

Leftists calling themselves “autonomes” and “chaots” were denied a city permit to demonstrate against the far-right National Democratic Party, known as the NPD. About 700 rightists were allowed to hold a morning march through the remote Hohenschoenhausen suburb, where they plodded along under the protection of at least twice as many police.

Across Berlin, a record 9,000 police and border guards turned out to protect the city from the protesters--and the protesters from one another.

By 6 p.m., about 100 leftists angry that their march through the Kreuzberg district had been banned began pelting riot police with cobblestones and other projectiles, provoking another lashing with water cannons and tear gas. At least three cars were set on fire before police managed to arrest the main troublemakers. Clashes continued deep into the night.

Politicians and community leaders of the heavily ethnic and leftist neighborhood criticized Berlin authorities for creating circumstances sure to lead to violence.

“I am here because I cannot tolerate watching the NPD marching through our city while left-wing demonstrators are banned,” Greens lawmaker Hans-Christian Stroebele said of his decision to take part in a protest.

Clashes between police and leftists also marred May Day activities in Mannheim, Essen and Frankfurt, the financial capital, where five police officers were hospitalized and dozens of protesters were arrested after they tried to attack another authorized NPD rally.

May Day demonstrations elsewhere in the world raged against political repression, economic injustice, pollution and lost social direction. A few of the holiday gatherings were celebratory, though, such as the 1,000 workers from North and South Korea who gathered at Diamond Mountain, a northern resort, to sing and dance at their first joint festival since the 1945 division of the Korean peninsula.

Sunny weather in Moscow contributed to a strong turnout for a parade and rally, bringing a sea of red banners to the area around the Kremlin. Posters and placards attacked President Vladimir V. Putin, the oligarch class and a proposed new labor code that would set aside Communist-era rules and permit employees to work 12-hour days. Police estimated as many as 30,000 people took part in Moscow’s observances, and across Russia more than 765,000 turned out for parades and protests to mark the traditional workers’ holiday.

“It means everything to me--the struggle for peace, labor, freedom and land. It is the struggle for human life,” said 78-year-old Viktor Shudin, a Communist Party member since 1945 who declared proudly that he has not missed a May Day parade since he was a schoolboy.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev led one quiet procession in Moscow, where, despite the better turnout compared with recent years, the observances were a shadow of the mammoth--and mandatory--Red Square parades of Communist times.

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Times staff writers John Daniszewski in Moscow and Marjorie Miller in London and special correspondent Christian Retzlaff of The Times’ Berlin Bureau contributed to this report.