Index – Abroad – This is how they are shown in the world in the midst of an epidemic

Outdoors, it would be hard to imagine a more favorable situation for the spread of the coronavirus than a classic manifestation: crowds, people squeezing, screaming worse, fighting in the end, clashes with the intervening police, and running the risk of being in a cell. with many of you

However, there is no doubt that this form of protest has disappeared in the world during the epidemic. And it’s not even the case that only those who think that the coronavirus is a hysterical threat rather than a real threat, or at least consider that the answers are exaggerated, would prove it.

In Pakistani Quetta, for example, more than 100 doctors and paramedics protested in early April about not receiving the government-promised protective equipment against the coronavirus. Their protests were violently dispelled, and many were arrested.

Booker Prize-winning writer Ahdaf Soueif, along with three other women, protested in mid-March in Cairo, Egypt, to free detainees from overcrowded prisons, a possible worldwide epidemic. All they accomplished was that they were arrested for illegal gathering and spreading false news, and only after more than a day were they released on bail.

Despite the threat posed by the demonstration, another group of protesters is demonstrating because they see themselves as being even more at risk than the coronavirus for what they are trying to protest. In the wake of the epidemic, the Venezuelan crisis has been protested by runaway food prices and food shortages, and hundreds of crowded people have been looted by stores. There were also unconfirmed reports that a 29-year-old man had died in Upata in the midst of the events, with shots to the head against him.

In India, famine threatens the many millions of guest workers who have been locked out of their homes by the country’s closure, and while trapped in distant cities due to lack of work and money, they would need them in their villages to harvest crops during all year. Distressed guest workers left on foot or in busy buses that were extremely dangerous to the virus, and if they were unable to do so, protested the possibility of arriving home, for example, at one of Mumbai’s train stations, after the restrictions were extended on April 14.

They also protested again in Hong Kong

The pandemic also did not completely end the politically motivated protests. For the first time since the Hong Kong outbreak, hundreds of pro-Beijing anti-government protesters gathered again on Sunday, continuing the wave of pro-democracy protests that began almost a year ago, with clashes between radical youth and more defendants. Of excesses and violence. The police have repeatedly used ammunition.

The April protest also ended with the police cracking down on protesters, this time for breaking distance rules, as more than four people have been unable to meet in public in Hong Kong since the end of March and have to stay one distance of a meter and a half.

In Israel, by adhering to spectacular coronavirus rules, a legal rally was held against the election of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accused of corruption. Rabin Square in the heart of Tel Aviv

Therefore, 2800 X was placed in the square. Finally, twice as many appeared, so some of the protesters were stationed on the surrounding streets.

Protesters with Israeli and black flags, wearing masks, remained at the scene for hours. One of the speakers at the event, opposition deputy Jaír Lapid, spoke: they came to express that they never cared about this political situation. “This is how democracies will be destroyed in the 21st century. Not that the tanks go through parliament. But from the inside because the good people remained silent and the weak gave up, “he said.

Alternative demonstrations during coronavirus

Along with the coronavirus, alternative, epidemiologically safe forms of protest have emerged, a collection of which was recently compiled by Buzzfeed. In Latin America, for example, they went back to the tradition of the noise of protests, the loud noise of pots and pans.

During the quarantine in Sao Paulo, many expressed their solidarity with health workers and showed in their windows, standing on their balconies, how much they had had from their president, Jair Bolsonaro. In Chile, on Friday, people sitting in prison were beaten in the same way with the pots.

In Brazil, a smiling portrait of the president was projected on the walls of houses in protest, and in Chile, a feminist advocacy group called Coordinadora 8M, even against domestic violence, did the same with the demonstration scenes.

In Russia, when they could no longer legally go there in person, online maps were flooded with thousands of protest messages around government buildings and other places symbolic of those outraged at the loss of their jobs and the lack of state aid. Virtual protesters seized the opportunity for their own purposes that anyone on the map for route planning could mark if, for example, they see a traffic jam somewhere.

In the Yandex map app used by Russians instead of Google, these messages first appeared in Rostov-on-Don, but it didn’t take long for them to appear in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. Most of the demands were to formally declare an emergency, which would require state social assistance, or to lift restrictions on work. Yandex finally saw the online protests to dissolve it: it started removing entries.

They protest against the measures

In Germany, more than 100 people were detained on Saturday in a demonstration of approximately 1,000 people after the rules attacked in protest at precautionary measures restricting their freedom were not followed. Most of the protesters in Berlin spoke of constitutional rights and the importance of freedom. They had inscriptions like “Freedom is not everything, but without freedom there is nothing”, but there were those who simply shouted:

I want my life back!

At the Berlin protest, a booklet was handed out in which they wrote about the artificially caused fear and referred to several doctors who said that no strict restrictions were necessary.

Some of the protesters wore masks and tried to stay away from others, others did not care if they were crowded. Distant protesters sitting on the ground were holding white roses, evoking a resistance movement against the Nazis. They may have had behind them a recent constitutional court decision in which the panel (judging submissions from freedom of assembly activists) ruled that people still have the right to protest if they abide by distance rules. social, the demonstration can not be prohibited in general. However, under the Berlin emergency rules, no more than twenty people were able to gather in public due to the epidemic: the police acted on this basis.

In Vienna, the ban on meeting is even stricter, where, in principle, no more than 5 people can be together in public places. Consequently, the anti-restriction rally on April 24 was originally announced by the organization called “Evidence-Based Information About Coronavirus” that only 5 people will gather. As we write: after the police, however, banned the demonstration, organizers responded by announcing a press conference instead of a demonstration, and at this address, approximately 200 people finally gathered at Albertinaplatz, with banners saying “enough was out of guardianship “and” I will die freely, as if I lived under your limitations. ”Among the protesters was Martin Sellner, the leader of the far-right Austrian identity movement.

The police have verified those present, they can wait to be processed. One of them, who resisted, was also arrested. The demonstration, which was the first one here since the curfew was imposed on March 16, took place peacefully anyway.

Demonstrations against the restriction received the most media attention in the United States, but those who demanded relaxation (including advocates of coronavirus conspiracy theories) also used to protest in neighboring Canada, for example, marching through the streets. from Vancouver a few days ago. pull home, and sometimes the eggs flew at them too.

In the United States, too, it would be an exaggeration to call protesters to lift the restrictions when, as we have written, most Americans, by all polls, take the threat of an epidemic very seriously, and three-quarters of people fear an opening. rushed. At the same time, protesters, who call themselves the opening party and are ideologically quite mixed, have appeared in 28 states. You can read about them and the American protests in detail here.

(Cover image: Projected portrait of Brazilian Prime Minister Jair Bolsonaro on a building in Sao Paulo in protest against the government on April 16, 2020. Photo: Miguel Schincariol / Getty Images Hungary)