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More than 10,000 people demonstrated on Saturday in Stuttgart, southwestern Germany, against epidemic restrictions, most of them without protective masks, the MTI wrote, citing a German police statement.
Epidemiological regulations in Baden-Württemberg do not restrict freedom of assembly. Stuttgart authorities had warned in advance that the demonstration would break up if its participants did not comply with mandatory regulations at the time of the coronavirus epidemic, but hundreds of police officers commanded at the protest site did not intervene.
The rally was largely peaceful, although Bild and Deutsche Welle reported that protesters despised and threw stones at members of the press at the scene, including ARD’s live registration staff, who disrupted the broadcast as a result. Authorities arrested a man on suspicion of beating a reporter.
Frank Überall, director of the German Association of Journalists (DJV), later expressed his outrage that the police had done nothing to protect journalists from mob attacks. Finance Minister Olaf Scholz also condemned the move, calling it a cowardly attack on press freedom.
Mayor Clemens Maiert drew attention to the fact that thousands of rapes occurred during the demonstration and that anyone who did not wear a mask or did not observe the prescribed distance could be fined.
The protesters marched to the streets to call for the Querdenken movement, whose adherents deny the existence of the coronavirus or the seriousness of the epidemic, spread conspiracy theories about it, and are also against vaccination. There have been several demonstrations against epidemiological restrictions in recent times.
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