As financiers from the World Bank and IMF convened here from September 26 to 28, activists were hoping for a turnout of as many as 40,000 protesters to disrupt the meetings in much the same way the WTO was foiled last fall in Seattle. As sociologist Walden Bello told a crowd of 400 at a three-day counter summit in the Czech capital, "We're here to shut the motherfucker down!"

But the anticipated tens of thousands of activists never materialized for the S26 day of worldwide action against globalization, which centered on Prague, the site of the 55th annual governors meeting of the IMF and World Bank, the first such gathering of Western financial bigwigs in the former Eastern bloc.

Some 8,000 activists gathered on Peace Square in front of St. Ludmila Church in

Demostrators in improvised protective gear square off with Czech riot police. JACK GUEZ/AFP

downtown Prague at around 9 a.m. For the most part, things remained calm, if not festive, with protesters from Spain and Italy entertaining the crowd with song and dance of an anti-capitalist variety. At about 11 a.m., the crowd began to march down Sokolska Street in the direction of Nuselsky Bridge, which spans a valley flanked on its Southern side by the Communist-era Palace of Culture, now renamed the Congress Center, where the financiers were gathering. Carrying placards reading "Smash the IMF" and calling for Third World debt relief, about 3,000 demonstrators continued toward the bridge as uniformed and plain-clothes police watched on nearby curbs.

They were met by a wall of riot police backed by heavy armored personnel carriers and a water cannon. Signs in English and German ordered the demonstrators to disperse. Though a round of tear gas was fired by police and some police barriers were pulled back by protesters, things remained relatively calm on the bridge. But underneath, a splinter band of protesters called the "Blue Group" managed to come within a few hundred yards of the Congress Center.

Outflanked Czech riot police were met by dozens of protesters in the Blue Group, many of whom dug up the cobbled streets and macadam and hurled stones and Molotov cocktails at the police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons. In a series of running battles, a handful of demonstrators managed to pierce the heavy security ring around the Congress Center, where police whisked the unnerved financial potentates away on special sealed trains.

Later in the evening, high-profile multinationals McDonald's, KFC and Mercedes Benz had store windows smashed by the Blue Group. More than 60 police and at least 20 protesters were wounded in clashes.

Overall, more than 800 demonstrators were arrested by the Czech police, according to INPEG (the Czech acronym for Initiative Against Economic Globalization), the umbrella group of protesting organizations. Czech news dailies lauded the police for their handling of the situation, although some faulted the police for not being tough enough. "The press and the ministry of interior have painted us as monsters," complained Alice Dvorska, a 21-year-old Czech activist.

"We've been systematically demonized, portrayed, you know, as young people interested in causing trouble, without issues, without reasoning, without our own program," adds 25-year-old Scott Codey, an American spokesman for INPEG.

As In These Times went to press, reports from INPEG complained of widespread "torture" in the jails, where released detainees say they were beaten and denied medical attention, and women were strip-searched and forced to do exercises in front of male guards.

Interior Minister Stanislav Gross had promised the police would be ready for anything the protesters offered. Officials in Prague came away impressed by the way police roughed up protesters in Washington during a similar bankers' jamboree last April. In fact, Czech police were "trained" by their Washington colleagues at that time. "Police in Washington right from the start had the situation under control," explained Gross, whose post, which he took up last spring, was riding on maintaining order.

Leading up to and during the event, Prague looked like it had been thrown back in time to the bad old days before 1989, with cops on virtually every street corner, on motorbikes and even in the skies. On the streets, people complained of being constantly harassed by Czech police who demanded ID from anyone fitting their "activist" profile.

Those who actually made it to Prague can count themselves among the fortunate, as border guards cited the flimsiest pretexts to keep would-be demonstrators and journalists out of the country. Lee Sustar, a reporter with the Chicago-based Socialist Worker and International Socialist Review, never cleared passport control at the airport. "This foreigner poses a threat to public order and the well-being of citizens," explained Czech police spokesman Iva Knolova.

Sustar's crime sheet is clean, though he was detained and later released by police during the Seattle demonstrations last year. The Czech daily Mlada Fronta noted ironically that Sustar had also worked for New Politics, which in the '70s published some of the smuggled work of the then dissident Vaclav Havel.

Another American, Kay Morrison, was banned from the Czech Republic for a year after border police stopped her three times trying to enter the country, the final attempt being with a group of cyclists planning to bike from Hanover to Prague for the demonstrations. The northern Bohemian border guard explained Morrison had been denied entry for having committed an "offense" there in the past. Morrison had visited Prague in February 1999 and had indeed run afoul of the law: She was fined 500 crowns--about $15--for smoking in a train station.

But Morrison, like Sustar, had been briefly detained by police during the ruckus in Seattle. Whether the FBI office in Prague offered the Czechs lists of U.S. activists is unclear, but Gross did say the FBI was assisting the Czechs in some undisclosed capacity. Border guards also stopped a Prague-bound train coming from Milan on September 24. The train was carrying some 520 activists from Ya Basta!, an Italian direct action group. Four people were singled out and ordered to leave the train. Their crime? "These four people last year took part in demonstrations in Seattle," Gross explained.

The Italians didn't budge, nor did the train, which stood at the Czech border village of Horni Dvoriste for hours. By nightfall, some 250 Czech police descended on the sleepy hollow. The Italians broke into groups, some setting bonfires across the tracks, snarling train traffic. Eventually, the four people agreed to return to Italy, after which the Czechs let the train travel onto Prague, where it arrived at around 2 a.m. the next day. All told, the BBC reported some 600 activists were kept out of the Czech Republic.

The bankers faced no similar problems. Eager Czech students were paid to meet VIPs at the airport to help fill out complicated customs forms and ease their arrival. During their stay in Prague, not only were some 200 cars at the bankers' disposal, but a fleet of the city's newest buses whisked a delegate or two at a time from posh hotels across town to the Congress Center, which the government spent $60 million to renovate. The buses, however, are the city's only ones equipped to handle the disabled, who found out their transportation had been commandeered when they showed up at bus stops but the buses didn't.

World Bank and IMF critics did get a chance to air their views and take on the top bureaucrats from the two institutions when Havel invited more than 300 VIPs to his Castle residence for a discussion on September 23. Sociologist Bello said he "never imagined ever sitting so close" to World Bank President James Wolfensohn, and the slight Filipino gave him an earful.

Horst Kohler, the president of the IMF, came to the defense of his bureaucrats. "People for the IMF don't have hearts, our critics say," he complained. "I have a heart. But I also use my brain, so that I can find solutions." Havel, who has waxed critical of capitalism, afterwards lamented the dialogue amounted to little more than a shouting match.

Some 300 NGOs were accredited for the official meetings, up from just two five years ago. But what influence they have, if any, is tough to gauge; no immediate plans were made to drop Third World debt, the NGOs' key issue. Meanwhile, protesters on the streets can at least boast their direct action caused the bankers to scurry out of town a day early, despite statements by the both the IMF and World Bank that they had managed to finish business ahead of schedule.