There have been clashes between police and anti-capitalist protestors outside a meeting of North and South American foreign ministers in the Canadian city of Windsor. The protestors, who number between 2,000 and 3,000, want to block agreement on a free trade area for the Americas which they claim will reinforce the power of wealthy nations at the expense of poorer South American countries. They have formed the Coalition to Shut Down OAS which comprises environmentalists, anarchists, human rights and anti-trade groups. They are supported by protestors in the US city of Detroit who marched in solidarity.
Most of the Windsor protests were largely peaceful, but police were forced to use pepper spray to block demonstrators who attempted to erect a massive anti-trade banner on a perimeter fence. Later, another protest group surrounded a bus carrying OAS delegates, slashing tyres and daubing graffiti. 44 people were arrested but fears of violence on the scale of recent anti-capitalist protests were unfounded and the OAS meeting ran to schedule. The Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has defended the summit, claiming that benefits for all nations of the hemisphere could be created. The summit will continue until June 6.
The state of Latin American democracy, threatened by recent coup attempts in Paraguay and Ecuador, and the controversial issue of a flawed presidential election in Peru, were expected to be high on the agenda at the 30th meeting of the OAS' General Assembly. Just hours before the meeting, the OAS' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights denounced Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori's re-election a week earlier as a "clear, irregular interruption of the democratic process" in Peru.
