Hotel Association executive John Harvey and labour leader and ruling party backbencher Derrick Burgess mixed it up with rioters in Geneva this week to avoid getting hurt by security forces trying to keep order.

The pair are in Geneva with a host of other Bermudians attending the annual summit of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which began on June 3 and ends on June 19.

Anti-globalisation demonstrations sparked by the G8 summit in the nearby French town of Evian had started at the weekend and grown increasingly violent over three days.

The protests had focused in central Geneva because security forces had successfully kept demonstrators out of Evian, a spa resort on Lake Geneva.

By Monday police had turned up the heat, using tear gas, water pellets and water cannon to force the rioters to disperse.

By then demonstrators, many of them wearing hoods and masks, had already done millions of dollars worth of damage and dozens of people had been arrested.

Mr. Burgess and Mr. Harvey found themselves trapped in a Movenpick restaurant in Geneva as a pitched battle raged outside Monday night.

"The police were determined not to have a repeat of the (weekend) disturbances," and had secured the areas of the weekend rioting, said Mr. Harvey.

But the rioters moved their activities to another side of town. "We watched them come and go around the security forces and then we went off in a different direction to Movenpick," Mr. Harvey said.

About an hour later "we saw hundreds of screaming, young people running past. We happened to have a window seat in this restaurant and we knew then that something was up."

Police had set up roadblocks in the area and were ready, heavily armed for riot control, for a showdown.

"There was a buzz and chatter in the restaurant and people started to empty out - they knew where to go, they were Swiss and our hotel was on the other side," Mr. Harvey continued speaking by telephone from Geneva.

So the two Bermudians stayed in the restaurant until they thought the disturbance had settled down before venturing outside.

But within seconds hundreds more demonstrators were rushing by as the police opened fire with rubber bullets, and the pair had to be let back into the restaurant by the manager.

"I cannot run like I used to, not like those young people," he continued.

"They came out for action. They had masks around their faces and scarves. They came out to fight and we came out to have a good dinner."

Half an hour later they decided to set out again. "This time we had to go back to where the young people were congregating, because the police were firing rubber bullets on the other side."

They eventually managed to get to their hotel without injury.

"We were concerned because when you hear the firing of anything and you know there's something behind it - it's not blanks - you realize that's not the place to be," said Mr. Harvey.

"We weren't scared, we just wanted to leave that area as soon as possible."