Beat Michel and Georg Nopper
Some left-wing demonstrators, who said they took to the streets against neo-Nazis in Zurich on Saturday, rioted on restaurant terraces on Limmatquai. A tricky situation arose for the police when they suddenly faced hundreds of black-clad rioters in a convoy of several emergency vehicles.
A video shows a group of protesters attacking the police. The recording shows how the emergency vehicles retreat on the Limmatquai. Faced with the overwhelming numbers of demonstrators, it looks like the officers will flee to cheers from the crowd. One of the emergency vehicles has to turn around and does not get away in time. The violent demonstrators hit the car and threw numerous objects at it.
“The water cannon came from Bellevue”
Judith Hödl, spokeswoman for the Zurich city police, on Blick: “The convoy was on its way to another mission. The group of attackers broke through a police barrier and only because of that got to the Limmatquai.” According to Hödl, several missions were running at the same time. The meeting was not intended. Hödl does not want to accept that the police officers had to flee from the demonstrators: “The water cannon came from Bellevue behind the demonstrators. So the convoy had to turn.”
A total of two unauthorized demonstrations partially paralyzed downtown Zurich on Saturday afternoon. The counter-demonstration by left-wing groups kept the police more busy than an originally intended meeting between various opponents of the Corona measures. At the beginning, Juso President Ronja Jansen (26) was also in the middle. She says about the chaos on the left: “We wanted to prevent the right-wing extremists from being able to openly propagate their Nazi slogans. We are shocked how it is possible to do this with impunity and openly in Switzerland.”
Right-wing extremists brought to the post
First, the city police stopped “a larger, violent group of people” in the old town, which is assigned to the right-wing extremist scene. She was taken to a police station for further investigation.
After 4 p.m., the Zurich city police also stopped a group of opponents of corona measures on Limmatquai. The participants were asked to cancel their move. They were checked, turned away and reported.
By 2 p.m., a little more than a thousand left-wing demonstrators had paralyzed the area around the main train station: they gathered at the State Museum and at the station square, shouting “Züri nazifrei”. The city police let them go to District 4. The participants then took different paths through the city center. There were occasional skirmishes with the police, who used water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets.