Politics Politics

Demonstration against the Covid-19 “emergency break” of the German government

More than 10,000 people protested in Berlin against the new version of the Infection Protection Act. A reportage

Wednesday, April 21, around 2:30 p.m.: The demonstration against the new version of the Infection Protection Act had already been broken up by the police an hour and a half ago. Until then, most of the approximately 10,000 people on the Straße des 17. Juni, near the Bundestag, were more in a party mood than in a fighting mood. Several groups had registered parallel gatherings, including Querdenken-30 from Berlin. Until the official end: no special incidents. Afterwards, in the adjacent park, the Tiergarten, an ever-growing crowd danced to, among other things, David Hesselhoff’s “Looking For Freedom,” the song about the fall of the Wall from New Year’s Eve 1989.

Now, after the demo broke up, police have closed off the street with bars. The demonstrators are told to move to the Tiergarten and go home. But many are determined to stay. An estimated thousand people gather in front of the cordon within sight of the Brandenburg Gate. Some have donned rain capes in case the police use water cannons, as they did at the large demonstration against the Infection Protection Act on November 18, 2020. Young riot police in black uniforms, with helmets and visors, have positioned themselves opposite the demonstrators.

Demo after the demo

Through a megaphone sounds the announcement of the police, the rally is dissolved and the people would thus now participate in an unauthorized event. They should proceed to the Potsdamer Strasse exit.

“We have the right to demonstrate,” someone shouts from the crowd. “We are the people, we are the people,” chants another, and those around him join in. 50 meters away, under the trees in the park, a woman sings the national anthem, and everyone joins in. A group of policemen appears, they want to push the demonstrators towards the exit. A young woman stands in front of them and screams her head off. It is hard to understand what she is shouting about, her voice is cracking. A quarter of an hour later, she is taken away by a handful of police officers.

Parents Rise – Wuerzburg”

“Rosi has now been taken away, just like Sarah from our group before her,” says a man. He introduces himself as a sociologist, educator and child protection specialist. He is a member of the initiative “Eltern Stehen Auf – Würzburg” (“Parents Rise, Wuerzburg”), and his name is Jayden.

Question: with what did the women provoke the police?

Jayden: You don’t have to provoke, you just have to sing the national anthem and you’ll get arrested. I’m really stunned.

What does “Parents Stand Up – Würzburg” stand for?

Jayden: We stand up for the freedom of choice whether to be vaccinated or not, also for a mask freedom and the test freedom. We think these measures are disproportionate to children. Parents are also under a lot of pressure because they don’t know how to deal with it. For one thing, there are no harmlessness studies. For another, children have a different lung volume than adults. Many parents then turn to us for advice. There are also doctors in our group, even chief physicians.

Two extreme cases. What about completely “normal” children?

Jayden: Most kids try to be as quiet as possible, “quiet” in the sense of, you don’t rebel. Because if you don’t, the child may be expelled in class. A lot of kids get bullied in the classroom because the parents are against the mask requirement. Or the children can’t wear a mask because they are asthmatic, for example. In some cases, kids have really collapsed in the classroom. One child even had to be taken away by ambulance two or three times. He had gotten dizzy each time, then collapsed, but still had to go back to class the next day and wear a mask.

Pushing and shoving

Little by little, more and more police officers proceed into the park. One tells them their job is to channel the demonstrators to the nearby exit. This is done with polite requests “You go now please all, the event is dissolved” about light “pushing and shoving”, as it will be called in the police report, up to kicks against demonstrators who have sat down on the ground for peaceful resistance. Standing in a line and slowly pushing their way towards the exit, the police officers form a black threatening backdrop. In between, a group of them starts moving and grabs, seemingly indiscriminately, a demonstrator, rarely a demonstrator, and leads them away. Then the crowd boos and whistles, you can hear whistles and drum beating. Anger boils up.

“Stop your violence!” a woman shouts. A man yells, “I hope you all die soon!” Another shouts in the direction of the policemen, “Join us. You know we’re being screwed, too.” (He means the government.) And again and again, “Shame!” and “Shame on you!”

“So much police against one person! I don’t think I can handle that,” Jayden says. “Actually, you become a cop to chase criminals – not peaceful protesters.” Just then, a group of police officers grabs another man. One cop jumps him from behind, takes his head between his arms and bends it back. To the objection that it appeared they were brutally attacking peaceful demonstrators, one policeman replies, “You didn’t see what the man did before.” He says no more, because as a police officer he is not allowed to comment publicly on the operation.

Next week demo in Munich

By now it’s almost 4pm. Jayden’s smartphone rings. Brief conversation, his face relaxes. “Rosi and Sarah are free again,” he says with relief. Indeed, at the exit of the park Rosi is waiting with her blue backpack. Fortunately, she would only have been charged with a misdemeanor – not wearing a mask. Sarah is already with the others. Now the group can drive back to Würzburg together that very day. Next week, they plan to demonstrate in Munich in front of the Bavarian Ministry of Education against compulsory testing in schools.

Jayden makes an example calculation: There would be 12 million school-age children in Germany. If you tested them twice a week, that would be 24 million tests. Over ten weeks, 240 million tests. With an error rate of only one percent, that would mean 2.4 million children who would have received a false positive result. You have to imagine what that means for a child: “They think they are sick. It might get the stamp of ‘Watch out, this kid has Corona, stay away from him!”‘ Jayden shakes his head. “It’s not said for nothing that if you sleep in democracy, you wake up in dictatorship,” he concludes. “We don’t want that. And that’s why we’re here.”

At the end

At the end, when only a few demonstrators are left standing at the park exit, and the first policemen are getting ready to get into their tubs to drive away, another demonstrator goes berserk when he is manhandled onto the sidewalk by a group of policemen. The man turns around and punches a police officer, who is no longer wearing a visor at this point, in the face with his fist. He is led away.


About “Eltern Stehen Auf – Würzburg”:
Since their first event in September 2020, the initiative organized several rallies and spontaneous tandems in Würzburg. Since November, they walk together several times a week in protest against the lockdown. In an open letter to the city of Würzburg, they demand the introduction of evaluation tools to determine the impact / consequences / feasibility of the measures on children / the population. In addition, they demand a non-discriminatory concept for masks-free people.

On the web: https://eltern-stehen-auf-wuerzburg.de/

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