Germans take to streets to protest lockdown rules
BERLIN: Thousands of Germans across the country took to the streets on Saturday to protest against restrictions imposed by the government to contain the coronavirus pandemic, police and organisers said.
Germany’s death toll from the virus has been lower than most of its European neighbours and some lockdown measures have already been relaxed.
However, protests against the measures Chancellor Angela Merkel insists are needed to slow down the coronavirus outbreak have become more vocal and demonstrators have filled the streets for the second weekend in a row.
Derided on social media as “covidiots” who risk causing a second wave of infections that could lead to a tightening of restrictions, protesters staged demonstrations at several locations across the capital Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg.
In Stuttgart, where some protesters last weekend flouted social distancing rules and did not wear face masks, police expected another rally.
In Munich, organisers asked authorities to give the green light for a rally of up to 10,000 people on the Theresienwiese, a large square in the city centre on which Munich normally stages its world-famous Oktoberfest beer festival.
But city officials pointed the need to respect social distancing and allowed a demonstration of up to 1,000 people.
The hardcore of protesters is being led by several new groups.
One group is Resistance 2020, led by a lawyer from eastern Leipzig and a doctor from south-western Germany who question official corona statistics and view the main political parties as constructs of an elitist rule.
Another group called COMPACT describes itself as the “sharp sword against imperial propaganda”. It declares on its website that it is helping the “information offensive” for the growing protest movement.
“Why aren’t you telling us the truth, Mrs Merkel? How we are losing our freedom, jobs and health?” says COMPACT.