F.Protests against the corona measures were announced again for Monday evening across Germany. It is a minority that demonstrates, but in what is known as social media they loudly determine what is going on and they become radicalized. Only at the beginning of last week had participants in Bautzen and Mannheim attacked several police officers and injured some. In Saxony, the demonstration has turned into a cat-and-mouse game with the police since the state government passed the strictest corona regulation in the republic in mid-November. In it, the right to demonstrate is limited to a maximum of ten participants, who are only allowed to gather in stationary units. As a result, opponents of the measures agreed to go for “walks”, especially in small and medium-sized towns, which posed problems for the police with regard to the number of emergency services.
The police therefore appealed to all peaceful participants on Monday to distance themselves “from violent actions”. Citizens could demonstrate in compliance with the existing corona emergency requirements. “Violent physical assaults on police officers and media representatives, throwing pyrotechnics and bottles, willful destruction of official vehicles – the police will not accept and will not tolerate this,” says the statement from the Görlitz police department. Violent criminals are “robustly countered” and violations are punished consistently. “Stick to the rules, watch your inner compass, don’t go side by side with violent criminals and extremists.”
In view of the increasingly dynamic operations, a discussion has broken out in Saxony about the restriction of freedom of assembly. The Saxon state parliament meets on Wednesday for a special meeting requested by the AfD parliamentary group, at which it calls for the “restoration of freedom of assembly”. The restriction to ten people had “permanently disrupted the peace in our country”, said parliamentary group leader Jörg Urban, albeit without saying that members and MPs of his party had called for immediate “walks” or took part in the regulation. Meeting participants and protesting strollers “automatically clashed with the police,” said Urban. “Only when the state government lifts the ten-person limit can the situation on our streets relax.”
The police union (GdP) sees the latter in a similar way. “In view of the week after week repetitive and expanding gatherings and the resulting police operations, we can not shake the feeling that the police are being abused as a substitute for the political debate,” said the Saxon GdP boss Hagen Husgen the MDR. Since mid-November, the emergency services have had to secure and break up hundreds of demos and protests every week. He called on the black-green-red state government to relax the restrictions on gatherings from mid-January.
The state chairman of the German Police Union (DPolG), Cathleen Martin, sees things quite differently. “The more and the bigger demos there are now, the more we have to be on the job,” she told the FAZ. “You should just leave the restriction like that until we are through the fifth wave.” The police officers are “strong at the end ”and could not use extra work now. She herself was “shocked at how many normal people trot behind radicals” and how the potential for aggression increases. “That scares me.” Saxony’s interior minister did not want to join the debate on Monday. The current restrictions apply until January 9th.