"Huli sa Balita"? Medyo lang naman.

A few days ago, an anti-WTO demonstration took place in Geneva, Switzerland. I don’t know if they showed it on the local news (they probably did), but my mom told me it was shown on CNN and all the other international news channels. I can’t seem to recall what in the world I was doing that day that I missed seeing the news, but I found out about it the next day through facebook.

A friend of mine uploaded some pictures of the demonstration, and I have to say, it was shockingly violent – shop windows were smashed, cars lit on fire, smoke bombs tossed around. Armored cars were even parked along the streets. I emailed another friend, asking about what happened, and he told me that an anarchist group had infiltrated the demonstrations and starting smashing things up. He said something similar had happened back in 2005 during the G8 summit in Evian (which I always thought was just a brand of particularly expensive bottled water).




As shocked as I was, though – and I must say, I was very shocked. I mean, Switzerland? The neutral country which only, I was told, had one general in its entire history, where you could walk around alone at night and be almost totally safe? – I have to admit that I was also a bit amused. To be able to use such terms as ‘anarchist group’ and ‘infiltrate’ when describing a ‘demonstration’... well, that’s just not something very common, at least for us living here. Rallies could almost be classified as common occurrences here, and burning things in effigy is definitely not out of the ordinary. Anarchist groups don’t need to infiltrate any demonstrations in order for things to get violent – just this afternoon things got violent at the Asian Center next to UP Law. I was told that the police were a bit... (ahem) overenthusiastic... and hurt some students, which is why OLA Team 6 was sent to check things out.

Thinking about all this brings to mind the joke people tell about how in the Philippines the police are there even before crimes occur. It makes us laugh, but when you think about it, it’s really... well, sad.


[end, blog no. 3; pictures were taken by Raymund Flores]