In the German city of Leipzig, it was anti-immigrant
right-wingers who held a May Day rally and leftists trying to
disrupt them who fought with police.
Elsewhere, parades marking the workers' holiday ranged from
orderly pageants to nostalgic mourning for communism.
In Nigeria, opponents of military ruler Sani Abacha called
for nationwide protests on May Day after seeing this year's
promised return to democracy headed for a one-candidate election
expected to transform him into a civilian president.
But the main protests were in the southwestern city of
Ibadan, an opposition stronghold where rioters tried to burn the
offices of a pro-Abacha newspaper and other building owned by
Abacha supporters.
Witnesses said police opened fire in at least two places and
seven bodies were taken to hospitals.
In Istanbul, Turkish "Robocops'' encased in armor, wielding
batons and firing water cannon dispersed stone-throwing leftists
at a 70,000-strong rally.
Dozens of protesters were injured, most beaten by police,
and more than 100 detained.
Reuters Television film showed "Grey Wolf'' rightists
hanging a leftist protester out of the first-floor window of the
Nationalist Action Party building as police and other members of
a 100-strong crowd of rightists beat him.
May Day in Turkey has a legacy of confrontation. In 1977, 37
workers were shot by suspected rightist gunmen and three
demonstrators died in fighting with riot police in 1996.
May Day was first declared a worker's holiday by the Second
Socialist International in 1889 and since then has been
celebrated by labor, especially socialists and communists.
In Seoul, the South Korean capital, riot police fired tear
gas at thousands of rock-throwing workers protesting against
growing layoffs caused by the economic crisis that has swept
east Asia.
South Korea this week announced unemployment had soared to a
16-year high of 6.5 percent, against 3.4 percent a year earlier.
In Japan, police said about 275,000 marched nationwide to
demand better treatment, at the end of a week in which figures
showed unemployment had jumped to 3.9 percent, the worst figure
since the end of World War Two.
Police in Moscow put the turnout at a communist May Day
march at 30,000. Elderly marchers carried portraits of Soviet
dictator Josef Stalin or banners attacking President Boris
Yeltsin's government.
It was a far cry from the millions who thronged the city on
May Day in Soviet times to mark one of the great festivals of
socialism. After Yeltsin became president, he put an end to
official parades on Red Square.
A separate rally organized by trade unions attracted some
15,000. In an updated echo of the sort of official pageantry
that accompanied Soviet parades, it was led by workers from the
Moskvich car factory, showing off their latest model and urging
people to buy local products.
"It is supposed to be a happy day,'' said 61-year old Maria
Vasiliyevna, wearing a Soviet-era Veteran of Labor medal in the
former Lenin Square in Almaty, capital of the former Soviet
republic of Kazakhstan. "Yet what happiness is there? We're
divided in two In formerly communist East Germany, May Day was
a showcase
for the tensions raised by far-right gains in a state election
last month.
Around 5,000 supporters of the National Democratic Party
marched in Leipzig waving "Jobs for Germans First'' banners and
shouting "The National Resistance is on the March.'' Police
used water cannon and truncheons to disperse thousands of
left-winger trying to disrupt the march.
In Poland, leftist May Day marchers exchanged insults and
missiles with right-wing hecklers in several cities.
But in still-communist Cuba, hundreds of thousands took part
in parades to show support for their one-party socialist system
and rejection of the U.S. trade embargo.
At least half a million people took part in the main parade
at Havana's Revolution Square, the first mass event there since
Pope John Paul's ground-breaking open-air Mass in January.
China's Communist Party leaders marked the day with rallying
cries to the proletariat, but there was bitter irony in the
slogans for millions of workers facing redundancy.
Dressed in a hard hat and blue overalls, Chinese President
Jiang Zemin was shown in the People's Daily shaking hands with
workers at Chongqing Iron and Steel, which is about to sack
1,500 staff.
Newspaper editorials hailed workers as "the masters of the
nation, the masters of enterprise,'' but urged them to support
reforms of state industry expected to put 10 million people out
of work.
Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese control last year, did
not celebrate May Day, having abolished the holiday that the
British colonial government brought in just before the handover.
Iraqi workers marked the day by burning U.S. flags in
Baghdad and blaming the United States for the suffering of their
people under United Nations sanctions.
German police used water cannon and truncheons to disperse a
group of leftists heading for the site of a far-right May Day
rally in the eastern city of Leipzig.
French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen used his party's
annual May Day rally to urge the French people to reject the
single European currency and keep the franc as a symbol of their
national sovereignty and values.