{"id":229866,"date":"2021-03-21T08:14:45","date_gmt":"2021-03-21T08:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=229866"},"modified":"2021-03-22T08:07:21","modified_gmt":"2021-03-22T08:07:21","slug":"police-clash-with-demonstrators-as-huge-anti-lockdown-protests-break-out-in-germany-and-switzerland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=229866","title":{"rendered":"Police clash with demonstrators as huge anti-lockdown protests break out in Germany and Switzerland"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><strong>Demonstrators took to streets in central German city of Kassel and were pictured engaging with riot police\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>In Berlin , some 1,800 police were on standby for possible riots, but only few dozen protesters assembled\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>In Zagreb, the Croatian capital, protesters also took to the streets to demonstrate against coronavirus\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>In Paris, images showed eerily quiet streets as non-essential shops in the city were closed from Saturday\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Harry Howard and AFP \u2013 Daily Mail March 22, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n<div id=\"attachment_229869\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Protestors-in-Kassel.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-229869\" class=\"wp-image-229869\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Protestors-in-Kassel.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"413\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Protestors-in-Kassel.jpg 620w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Protestors-in-Kassel-480x320.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) 620px, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-229869\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Protestors in Kassel carry signs that read &#8216;End the lockdown&#8217; and &#8216;Corona rebels&#8217;. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Protesters clashed with police in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/germany\/index.html\"><strong>Germany<\/strong><\/a> and Croatia and some took to the streets in Switzerland on Saturday as new lockdowns were introduced in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/france\/index.html\"><strong>France<\/strong><\/a>, Poland and Ukraine to battle a third wave of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/coronavirus\/index.html\"><strong>coronavirus<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Police used pepper spray to disperse people protesting against coronavirus curbs in the German city of Kassel in one of the country&#8217;s largest such rallies so far this year.<\/p>\n<p>The protest attracted between 15,000 and 20,000 demonstrators, a Kassel police spokesman told AFP, making it one of the largest such rallies so far this year.<\/p>\n<p>Several groups, most of them far-right opponents of government&#8217;s regulations to fight the pandemic, had called for protests Saturday in cities across the country.<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/berlin\/index.html\"><strong>Berlin<\/strong><\/a>, some 1,800 police officers were on standby for possible riots, but only a few dozen protesters assembled at the city&#8217;s landmark Brandenburg Gate.<\/p>\n<p>In Switzerland, thousands of demonstrators descended on the small northern Swiss town of Liestal, while others gathered in Basel, to demand an end to measures that have shut restaurants and other venues for months.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_229871\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Protesters_in_Zagreb_Croatia_attend_the_World_Wide_Day_of_Freedo-a-37_1616246397851.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-229871\" class=\"wp-image-229871\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Protesters_in_Zagreb_Croatia_attend_the_World_Wide_Day_of_Freedo-a-37_1616246397851.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"414\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Protesters_in_Zagreb_Croatia_attend_the_World_Wide_Day_of_Freedo-a-37_1616246397851.jpg 620w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Protesters_in_Zagreb_Croatia_attend_the_World_Wide_Day_of_Freedo-a-37_1616246397851-480x320.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) 620px, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-229871\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Protestors in Zagreb, Croatia. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In Zagreb, the Croatian capital, protesters also gathered to rail against coronavirus.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, in Paris, images showed eerily quiet streets as\u00a0non-essential shops in the city were closed from Saturday for at least a month to try to grapple with rising infection rates.<\/p>\n<p>In total, a third of France&#8217;s population woke up to new restrictions.<\/p>\n<p>In Poland most shops will be shut for the next three weeks along with hotels and cinemas, with similar measures introduced in Ukraine&#8217;s capital Kiev.<\/p>\n<p>Several thousand people gathered at the main protest site on a square in Kessel&#8217;s city centre, packed closely together without wearing face masks, an AFP reporter saw.<\/p>\n<p>Scuffles erupted when a group of demonstrators tried to break through a police cordon to join up with other protesters, resulting in shoving and prompting officers to use pepper spray.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;This is not what a peaceful protest looks like,&#8217; North Hesse police tweeted.<\/p>\n<p>Officers had used &#8216;pepper spray and batons&#8217; against protesters, police said, adding that there had been &#8216;repeated attacks&#8217; against emergency service workers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;We don&#8217;t tolerate such attacks,&#8217; they wrote, saying they had water cannon on stand by.<\/p>\n<p>The protest was called by the &#8216;Querdenker&#8217; or Lateral Thinkers movement, an umbrella group that has organised some of Germany&#8217;s largest &#8216;anti-corona&#8217; demonstrations since the start of the pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>The movement has drawn in people from the far-left, conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers and right-wing extremists.<\/p>\n<p>Some of them don&#8217;t believe the pandemic is real, while others claim the curbs imposed to rein in the coronavirus infringe on their civil rights.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_229872\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Protestor-with-Merkel-mask.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-229872\" class=\"wp-image-229872\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Protestor-with-Merkel-mask.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Protestor-with-Merkel-mask.jpg 620w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Protestor-with-Merkel-mask-480x325.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) 620px, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-229872\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A protestor wearing a mask with an image of German Chancellor Angela Merkel holds up a placard with the lettering reading &#8216;Angela, your 1989 has come&#8217; during a demonstration to demand the compliance of basic rights and an end of the restrictive coronavirus measures in Kassel, central Germany, on March 20. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Some demonstrators in Kassel held up signs that read &#8216;End the lockdown&#8217; and &#8216;Corona rebels&#8217;, or carried heart-shaped balloons.<\/p>\n<p>Many also waved &#8216;Querdenker&#8217; flags from different parts of the country, suggesting people had travelled to join the rally.<\/p>\n<p>The founder of the Querdenker movement, Michael Ballweg, in late December urged supporters to halt their protests until the spring.<\/p>\n<p>The Kassel protest&#8217;s organisers had registered for up to 6,000 participants.<\/p>\n<p>Several other German cities saw similar rallies last weekend, but on a smaller scale.<\/p>\n<p>In Switzerland, between 3,000 and 5,000 people, many wearing white protection jumpsuits, gathered in the small town in the Basel canton for what they have called a &#8220;Silent Protest&#8221;, according to estimates by journalists on site.<\/p>\n<p>The protesters, many not wearing facemasks, held signs with messages reading &#8220;Enough!&#8221;, &#8220;Vaccines kill&#8221; and &#8220;Let love guide you, not fear&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>They accuse the Swiss government of using dictatorial powers to impose restrictions aimed at reining in Covid-19 transmission.<\/p>\n<p>The demonstration, which had police authorisation, is the latest in a series of public protests across the country in recent months, including one earlier this month in the small, picturesque town of Chur that drew over 4,000 people.<\/p>\n<p>Organisers of Saturday&#8217;s demonstration in Liestal, which has a population of around 14,500 people, said in a statement they expected around 5,000 people to take part, but urged more to join.<\/p>\n<p>They complained in a statement ahead of the march that the Swiss government had taken the country &#8220;hostage&#8221; over a year ago.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-9383719\/Police-clash-demonstrators-huge-anti-lockdown-protests-break-Germany.html\">Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Protests across Europe as a new lockdown is imposed in Paris and \u201cexperts\u201d warn of a third wave of the pandemic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":229874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=229866"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229875,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229866\/revisions\/229875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/229874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=229866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=229866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=229866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}