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Friday, 15 June, 2001, 17:52 GMT 18:52 UK
Gothenburgers count the cost
![]() Sweden's second city has never seen anything like it
By BBC News Online's Lars Bevanger in Gothenburg
It wasn't supposed to happen. Yet by Friday afternoon, Gothenburgers were
assessing the damage done to their town after violent clashes between
hundreds of protesters and police.
The pavements down the city's main shopping street, Avenyn, were littered
with broken glass.
Click here to see map of the region
Elsewhere stretches of pavement were simply missing, as protesters had helped themselves to cobblestones to use as missiles against mounted police.
Further along lay a smouldering pile of chairs and tables from an outdoor
café. Rioters had thrown them together before setting fire to them.
Unrecognisable
People were walking around with baffled expressions, while others stood in
little groups talking about what they had just witnessed.
Anne-Mari, a woman in her fifties, had been out shopping when the trouble
started.
"I had to run to avoid the stones. It is terrible what has happened here.
"I don't recognise Gothenburg." Her friend Ingrid is equally taken aback. "I never would have thought this could happen here." Unprecedented Neither, it seems, did the main organisers of the protests nor the police. Both sides had been speaking highly of the good dialogue between them ahead of the summit. Sweden, let alone Gothenburg, has never seen anything like this. Many of the police here have been drafted in from small towns all around the country.
Lars Unoviking, a police inspector from the south-eastern city of Norkoping, says even after 30 years as a police officer he has never witnessed anything on this scale. "This is sad for Gothenburg, sad for Sweden," he says.
"It's just the kind of activities we were trying to avoid." The Swedish Prime Minister, Goran Persson said: "This is a blatant disregard for democracy and unworthy of a society such as ours." Public protest has deep roots and proud traditions in Sweden. Swedish grassroots are used to being consulted by those in power. The people of Gothenburg and Sweden might feel broken windows and uprooted pavements do not serve to further this dialogue.
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