Riots Continue In Berlin

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31656, 17 April 1968, Page 11

Riots Continue In Berlin

(N.Z P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) WEST BERLIN, April 16. Defiant Left-wing students remained determined today to continue their demonstrations in West Berlin, despite the tough police action which had crushed their protests in bitter street battles last night Riot squads in battledress called in water hoses and mounted police to thwart renewed attempts by the students to besiege the printing

(houses of the Axel Springer Publishing Group and prevent the circulation of its newspapers in Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich. In Frankfurt, 4000 young people, enraged by mounted police swinging rubber truncheons, linked arms and charged through the city's nightclub district, chanting “Springer - Murderer,” after they had been put to flight. At least 26 police and demonstrators were injured as the the students fought the police, first at the Springer building and then outside the railway station, before staging a sitdown in the square outside the Frankfurt City Hall. In Munich, 80 demonstrators were detained, and in Hamburg 35 were arrested.

West Berlin, the focal point where the demonstrations began last Thursday after the attempted assassination there of the student leader, “Red” Rudi 'Dutschke, was relatively free from violence. Strong police guards with two armoured cars in reserve prevented about 2000 students from marching on the 18storey Springer building oy the Berlin Wall. Instead, the students demonstrated outside the city's television station, demanding for themselves an hour’s daily programme. The students’ demands for Springer group—and, in particular, its mass circulation newspaper, “Bild Zeitung”— is responsible for a climate of political intolerance which led to the attack on Dutschke. In Hamburg, the students’ union called for a boycott of lectures today when the university summer term opens. The demonstration at the television station last night lost some effect when the station director unexpectedly agreed to face a large, hostile audience and discuss their

grievances with them. Nothing came of the talks. The students’ demands for discussion of their grievances have been taken up by several authorities, and this, coupled with reports of tougher police measures in West German cities, may cause the students to switch to a lower gear. At least 400 demonstrators in West Berlin and elsewhere in West Germany have been arrested in the last four days of rioting.