GENEVA - Geneva's big-name banks and sleek stores, its swanky restaurants and luxury hotels, disappeared behind yellow wood boards Friday for G-8 protests that police fear will turn violent.
"It looks like Belfast in the 1970s after a bomb," Ivan McCallin, a native of northern Ireland, said as he tried to reconcile the barricaded buildings with the images of the elegant lakeside city portrayed in tourist brochures.
The G-8 summit opens Sunday in Evian, France, but security there will be extremely tight. As a result, up to 300,000 protesters will gather across the border in Switzerland for demonstrations in Geneva.
All the leaders of the G-8 — the world's seven most industrialized nations plus Russia — will arrive for the summit at Geneva airport, and protesters want to block the route to Evian.
Geneva authorities printed 70,000 leaflets welcoming protesters to their city of "peace and tolerance," and set aside a stadium to serve as an anti-globalization village.
The protesters' top target is globalization, which they say benefits wealthy countries at the expense of the world's poor. Many protesters want rich nations to forgive the debt of third-world countries and also seek greater protection for the environment. Opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is also expected to be a major theme.
Downtown Geneva was all but empty Friday, with offices and banks closed and many parents afraid to send children to school.
Most banks and jewelry stores took down their signs, leaving passers-by guessing at what lay behind the anonymous yellow boards.
The boards provided plenty of opportunity for black humor.
"Wood also burns," a comment scrawled on a board said.
"I want to withdraw my loot. Signed Saddam H.," read the graffiti on a board in front of a bank.
Maurice Lavergnat, a florist, said he had used up three rolls of film taking images of the barricades. Next week he plans to return to take shots of the same watch and jewelry stores and international banks in their more familiar states.
"It's horrible, and very worrying. There is complete psychosis," he said, adding ruefully that even his yoga course just over the border in France has been canceled because the community hall has been requisitioned by the army.
Lavergnat's flower shop is on the route of the main demonstration scheduled for Sunday. Unlike most of his neighbors, he has no plans to barricade his store, hoping that his presence in the building will deter vandals.
In a warm-up for the protests, about 1,500 anti-globalization demonstrators in Geneva danced, drummed and marched Friday past the headquarters of the World Trade Organization and other international organizations they accuse of exploiting the poor for the sake of the wealthy.
About 100 people, many masked and clad in black, broke through the WTO main gate and shot flares at the shuttered building, but did not try to break through riot police blocking the front door. Police fired tear gas after a small group of anarchists smashed windows of the International Organization for Migration. There were no arrests.
Three people were arrested for smashing the windows of a gas station at the end of the march, police said Friday evening.
A contingent of 1,000 German police augmented Swiss forces at the Geneva airport. Passengers arriving Friday had to pass through columns of police as they disembarked.
Soldiers were positioned on all highway bridges and scattered at strategic locations throughout the mountains surrounding Lake Geneva. Even country churches were used as military outposts, sealed off by barbed wire and surrounded with warning signs that people disobeying orders risked being shot.
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