Protesters given drenching

Press, 5 September 1983, Page 10

Protesters given drenching

NZPA Bitburg The police detained 155 anti-nuclear protesters and used water-cannon yesterday to disperse hundreds of others blocking a road at Bitburg air force base. More than 3000 demonstrators massed outside a United States Army missile depot in the South German town of Mutlangen on the last day of a 72-day blockade.

The German police reported no incidents at the Mutlangen demonstration, which began on Thursday at the opening of a “hot autumn” of protests against stationing new American nuclear missiles in West Germany. The protest at Bitburg, in the Eifel Hills near the German Luxemburg

frontier, began Saturday morning when 200 people sat on a road linking the air field with a nearby American housing area.

The police began carrying the demonstrators off the road when they refused orders to disperse, and dozens were taken into custody for identity checks before being released. When the demonstrators returned to the road the police sprayed them with jets of water from a special truck and drove them off. Two other sit-downs had been broken up later, the authorities said.

The police said that the demonstrators had acted “completely passive,” going limp when they were carried off the road, and there had been no violence.