APEC protesters turn out early on Xi Jinping-Joe Biden meeting day
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SAN FRANCISCO: Protesters took to the streets of San Francisco on Wednesday (Nov 15) as a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping took place, obstructing some entrances to the APEC conference and blocking downtown streets.
Global leaders and CEOs of major US corporations will all be at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in San Francisco, offering tempting targets to protest.
Opponents of Xi and China marched through downtown around noon. Hundreds moved through the city's centre near the San Francisco convention centre, chanting "free Tibet" and "free Hong Kong".
Headed by a police escort, the peaceful group - which stretched for multiple city blocks - blocked one of the main downtown thoroughfares, as it moved in a slow circle around the convention center's perimeter.
“We can say beyond a reasonable doubt that this will be the largest anti-Xi protest during the bilateral talks hosted here in the United States in the history of Xi Jinping’s time as a dictator of China,” Pema Doma, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, said early in the day.
A smaller group of Xi supporters gave thumbs-down gestures to protesters downtown, and local television showed crowds welcoming Xi, waving huge Chinese and American flags, as well as posters of the two flags together, along a highway south of San Francisco where the presidents were scheduled to meet. Some protesters also lined that route.
People also are using the meeting as a forum for global issues such as the Israel-Hamas war and responding to climate change.
Early on Wednesday, about 150 people gathered at an intersection outside a security zone at the city's convention centre. The group formed a human chain that prevented conference attendees from walking through the intersection, diverting some commuters and delegates onto nearby streets.
"I'm actually kind of impressed by the fact that there's so few people here and they've actually kind of gummed up the works a little bit," said Gary Hughes from the advocacy group Biofuelwatch.
Protesters held signs that said "War criminals out of SF" and "From Palestine to the Philippines stop the US war machine".
Police donned protective helmets and formed a line about 15m from a speaker and microphone for speeches, but there were no major clashes before the non-Chinese protests ended, around midday.
Thousands of police lined streets near the convention center, and protests in the days before the Biden and Xi meeting had been relatively peaceful, with some crowds stretching for blocks, including a march uniting several interest groups on Sunday.
San Francisco has cleaned up downtown streets for the meeting, and it had prepared for a potential confrontation with demonstrators: 2.4-metre-high metal mesh barriers have been erected to keep people on sidewalks from interfering with vehicle traffic near the convention centre.
The potential for disruptions around the summit site, portions of which were shut to vehicles and foot traffic, led the US Department of Homeland Security to designate the meeting a national special security event, putting the US Secret Service in charge of coordination of policing agencies.
