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The German government is concerned about the extremism of the “anti-mask” movement, which took place in protest against restrictions imposed to limit the spread of the Crown epidemic, and tried, on Saturday, to storm the German parliament, and ended with the arrest of 300 people.
On Sunday, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier denounced “an unlikely attack on the heart of our democracy.”
“We will never accept this,” the head of state added in a statement posted on Instagram, at a time when the “anti-masking” movement is radicalizing in the face of the measures imposed against Covid-19.
Images showing several hundred protesters on Saturday trying to cross security barriers to climb the stairs leading to the entrance to the Reichstag building shocked Germany.
On Sunday, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer condemned the protesters’ attempt to storm the Reichstag building in Berlin. He told the daily Bild that the attempt by “extremists and rioters” to storm the Reichstag building, the seat of the German parliament, “and the symbolic center of our democracy”, was “unacceptable”.
At the last minute, the police managed to prevent them from entering the building, using aerosols to disperse the crowd. She arrested several people.
Police appeared nervous at the entrance to the Reichstag, with only a few officers trying to prevent the crowd from storming the building.
A place full of history
“We cannot be everywhere, and these are precisely the weaknesses that are used to cross security barriers to reach the Reichstag stairs,” said Thilo Kaplitz, spokesman for the local police.
The Reichstag, where German legislators hold their public meeting, is highly symbolic. In 1933, the Nazis set the building and its dome on fire, in an act that historians believe was aimed at attacking what was left of German democracy in the interwar period.
The conservative Interior Minister said that “plurality of opinions” is “a characteristic of the proper functioning of society,” and added to the newspaper “Bild” that freedom of assembly in this case “reaches its limits where the general rules are trampled. ”.
The Berlin municipality tried to ban the meeting, arguing that it was impossible to maintain physical distance, given the number of people participating in the protest. But the judiciary, which the organizers turned to, finally allowed the demonstration to take place.
In total, there were 38,000 people, according to the police, double what was initially expected.
About 300 people were arrested during clashes with the police in front of the Reichstag building and in front of the Russian embassy near the center of the city, where protesters threw empty bottles and stones at the police.
Gather the far right
The protesters gathered to denounce the measures imposed to combat the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic, such as the use of masks and the maintenance of physical distancing, which they see as an attack on their freedoms.
This came two days after Angela Merkel’s government announced new restrictions in the face of the notable increase in the number of wounded.
The crowd included anti-vaccines, conspiracy theorists and citizens concerned about the restrictions associated with the epidemic, but also, according to authorities, supporters of the far right.
And titled “Bild”, the most popular newspaper in the country, on Sunday, “We must stop the brown virus!”
For his part, Merkel’s German Deputy Finance Minister Olaf Schultz said that “Nazi symbols and flags of the German Empire have no place before the House of Representatives.”
Some of the protesters who tried to storm Parliament waved the flags of the German Empire, which existed until 1919, in black, white and red.
“To see the flags of the German Empire in front of parliament is a disgrace,” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas wrote on Twitter.
He added that those who wish to defend the right to protest “should not go so far as to follow right-wing extremists.”
Among the protesters who were arrested in front of the Russian embassy, one of the leading figures in the “anti-mask” movement in Germany was Attila Heldmann, who became known as a vegetarian cook and is now a member of the “far right”.
