Commodities summit attracts activists’ ire

"Thieves, looters, killers!" Demonstrators during a protest against the Financial Times Commodities Global Summit in Lausanne on Tuesday Keystone

Around 200 demonstrators have marched through Lausanne, protesting against a conference attended by the world’s biggest commodities traders. They denounced the “looting” of resources in developing countries. 

Leaving the station, the protestors headed through the city down to the edge of the lake, near the hotel that was hosting for the eighth consecutive year the FT Commodities Global SummitExternal link. 

Messages on placards included “Traders, bankers, stop your skulduggery”, “Famine, listed on the stock exchange” and “Save the planet, eat a capitalist”. 

One protester, addressing the crowd, denounced the “dirty hands of the brokers” and called for international solidarity, especially for developing countries that are victims of commodity traders. 

Twenty or so demonstrators dressed in black provoked the police, knocking over barriers, before being doused in pepper spray. 

A few metres away, a marriage was “celebrated” between Foreign Affairs Minister Ignazio Cassis and Glencore, the world’s biggest mining company with headquarters in the Swiss canton of Zug. Cassis recently made headlines and angered NGOs because of a trip to Zambia and his visit to Glencore.