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The police broke up the demonstration against the Infection Protection Act in the Berlin government district. The authority announced it on Twitter. He asked the participants to leave the meeting place. Many protesters did not wear mouth and nose protection and thus violated the requirements.
The police also used water cannons. Emergency services began spraying people after they were asked to walk several times. Tear gas was also reportedly used. The protesters screamed and whistled. Sometimes there was an aggressive mood.
The demonstration took place before the vote in the Bundestag on the new Infection Protection Act. “The meeting on June 17 was declared closed by the president at 12:06 pm,” police tweeted. A spokesman also referred to a request for dissolution of the officials, which affects the area of the Brandenburg Gate. The background is violations of the Infection Protection Act. The authorities also said: “Since the former participants in the assembly in Platz des 18. March did not fulfill the obligation to leave the place, people were simply showered by our water cannons.”
The police also reported that attacks on emergency services had occurred during the protests. “At our colleagues they threw bottles, rocks and firecrackers and attacked them with pepper spray,” read another tweet. The officers used physical force and pepper spray and arrested some attackers. No numbers were given.
By morning, the protesters had already gathered around the closed Reichstag building and the Republic Square in front of it. The mood was initially calm, a police spokesman said. The protesters also gathered at the Brandenburg Gate. In images and videos, however, numerous people could be seen who did not meet conditions such as the distance requirement and the mask requirement. A journalist from the »Tagesspiegel« in Berlin reported that the police had taken people who had passed through a chain of officers.
Police reported that 5,000 to 10,000 people had gathered in the area at the Brandenburg Gate alone, and that there was a new influx. Another 1,000 protesters were on the Marschall Bridge.
More than 2,000 police officers are on duty, including support from nine other federal states and the federal police. A SPIEGEL reporter observed that the ARD and ZDF buildings in the capital were under police protection. The public service media has repeatedly been the target of Corona’s protests.
Bundestag AfD member Stephan Protschka shared a video on Twitter that allegedly shows the arrest of his fellow parliamentary group Karsten Hilse. Initially, the background of the police operation was unknown. Hilse said in a video that was distributed by members of the AfD parliamentary group that the police approached him because he was walking without a mask. However, he had a medical certificate that released him from the mask requirement.
Police complained that it did not include any specific disease. When he wanted to make a video, there was a physical discussion. Hilse said it seemed “absurd” for someone to react this way because of an administrative infraction. The Berlin police press office did not initially have any information about the incident.
There have been several reports on how the security forces treated the press. ZDF correspondent Florian Neuhann reported on Twitter friendly interaction. “Tagesspiegel” reporter Sebastian Leber wrote that a police officer had asked him to keep his press ID visible at all times. “In response to my objection that we journalists would be attacked, he said literally: ‘Yes, that’s your problem,” Leber wrote.
Several demonstrations recorded directly in front of the Reichstag building in the so-called pacified district had been banned on Tuesday by the Federal Interior Ministry responsible for the areas. Therefore, the police extensively cordoned off the area. There were numerous calls on the Internet not to register demonstrations, but to spontaneously drive to Berlin and protest in the Bundestag. The police spoke of a “high level of mobilization”.
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