CNN - Violent protests flare on May Day

Violent protests flare on May Day

May 1, 1996
Web posted at: 10:20 p.m. EDT (0220 GMT)

(CNN) -- Political rallies, marches, rock concerts and scattered violence marked May Day -- the international labor day -- as workers across the globe called for job security and more wages.

An interactive glance at May Day

Violence in Turkey, China, South Korea and Sri Lanka

Some 100,000 people celebrated May Day in the Asian side of Istanbul, Turkey. But the demonstration turned bloody as at least three people were killed and dozens, mostly policemen, were injured when police and an outlawed terrorist group clashed.

The May Day celebrations were organized by leftist unions to protest high inflation. Protesters wearing masks and carrying flags bearing the hammer-and-sickle symbol seized the platform where union leaders spoke.

More clashes erupted afterward as leftist protesters set security barricades on fire and stoned stores and banks.

Police reportedly fired shots in the air and armored vehicles rolled into the area. At least two of the demonstrators died from gunshot wounds.

During a 1977 May Day gathering in Istanbul, unidentified gunmen opened fire on thousands of demonstrators, killing 37.

In Seoul, hundreds of South Korean students and union activists hurled firebombs at riot police on the eve of May Day, demanding the government halt its crackdown on union activists. (1MB QuickTime movie)

Hundreds of riot police used tear gas to disperse the protesters as they tried to leave the campus of Sogang University after the two-hour rally.

Chinese police broke up a May Day demonstration after clothes vendors protested the alleged seizure of their goods. Several people were detained.

Weeping stall owners said their products had been confiscated and their market shut one year after they signed 12-year leases.

"We've been to the police and to the government, and they don't care about us," one stall owner said

In Sri Lanka, at least five people were injured when police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse members of a political party defying a government ban on parades because of a separatist Tamil guerrilla rebellion on the Indian Ocean island.

Celebrations turn political in Russia

In Moscow, the annual celebrations became a political hotbed as thousands of marchers turned out en masse in support of presidential candidates.

President Boris Yeltsin told trade unionists that all democratic forces must join together in next month's June 16 election to thwart communism. Yeltsin trails Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov in most polls.

"We must win the election to confirm we are going the right way and we will win," he said.

At one point, a jubilant Yeltsin even danced a jig with a woman in folk dress. The leader, whose health has been in question after two heart attacks last year, appeared fine as he twirled the woman with a smile spread across his face.

Across town, a bigger demonstration took place. Nearly 10,000 Communist supporters, led by Zyuganov, gathered under a statue of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin before marching in a sea of red flags to the Bolshoi Theater.

"There is not a single person here who won't be voting for Gennady Zyuganov," said one marcher as a light rain began to fall.

Cubans turn out in force

Nearly a million Cubans took to the streets of Havana as part of May Day celebrations, waving red flags and holding up portraits of revolutionary heroes and banners with anti-U.S. slogans.

"Socialism or death! Fatherland or death! We will be victorious," shouted Pedro Ross, the head of the Cuban labor movement, to start the parade.

As more and more people streamed in, the line of marchers stretched for miles in rows 50 to 60 across. President Fidel Castro watched from a reviewing platform at the Plaza of the Revolution but did not speak.

Castro had sent government officials door-to-door, recruiting people to march. He called for 1 million participants in a demonstration meant to show the world -- and especially Cuba's disapproving neighbor, the United States -- that socialism is strong.

Hundreds of thousands of people turned out, though it was unclear whether Castro got his million.

"We are so satisfied to be called internationalists, to be called socialists, to be called Communists," Castro said.

The May Day parade also served as a protest of the Helms-Burton Act, approved last month by U.S. lawmakers to strangle international investment in Cuba.

While Cuba trumpeted its socialism, a tiny flotilla of Cuban exiles from Miami sailed to the edge of its territorial waters and tossed flowers and human rights pamphlets into the sea to protest Castro's regime.

The exiles promised to stay in international waters to avoid repeating the February 24 incident where Cuban jets downed two planes flown by member of Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami exile group. Four people were killed in that incident.

Angry protests in France, Germany, Poland, Belgium

In France, where 11.9 percent unemployment has turned people away from the traditional parties, demonstrators called on the government to expel immigrants from France.

French unions, still split after a crippling 24-day public sector strike in 1995, the most serious labor unrest in France for a decade, marked the day with separate marches.

The far right National Front party staged its own march through Paris, while 200 people gathered by the River Seine as a tribute to a Moroccan drowned by skinheads on the fringes of last year's march by the anti-immigrant party.

In east Berlin police wielding batons fought with stone-throwing rioters as a 10,000-strong radical leftist May Day parade turned violent. At least 18 officers were injured. Elsewhere, tens of thousands of union members rallied against government plans which they say will hit the needy without achieving the aim of creating jobs.

Several hundred far rightists, most with shaven heads, marched through Berlin streets in an anti-international demonstration, chanting "German jobs for German workers."

In Belgium, teachers in a two-month feud over funding cuts pelted ministers with eggs and tomatoes while Spanish unions organized rallies demanding a cut in unemployment.

In Warsaw, young rightists, wearing old Communist-style clothes and holding up red banners in a mocking nod to the Communist past, flung fireworks to disrupt a May Day march by Poland's ruling leftist parties.

Zedillo jeered in Mexico

In Mexico City, angry workers jeered President Ernesto Zedillo as thousands of others filled the streets to protest an economic crisis and Zedillo's inability to end it. Thousands of police, some in riot gear, were mobilized but there were no early reports of trouble.

A rock concert, a night of drinking

In Italy, tens of thousands of marchers also called for more jobs, while Rome celebrated the holiday with a huge, open-air, 14-hour rock concert attended by more than 300,000 people in an enormous square next to San Giovanni Cathedral.

At the Vatican, Pope John Paul II recalled his working days in a Polish quarry and offered his "old comrades of the workplace" a fond greeting. He also asked people to pray for the unemployed.

Other Europeans celebrated May Day in the old-fashioned way, by using the holiday to have fun.

In Britain, Oxford University students kept up their light-hearted tradition of plunging into the Cherwell River after a night of drinking and dancing.

May Day began as a celebration of spring, but later became an international Labor Day with the rise of the Labor movement in 19th century Europe.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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