Organizers, a motley gathering of opponents measures related to the Covid-19 epidemic, counted on some 20,000 participants in this event in one of the city’s large squares.
Police have so far not given an estimate of the number of protesters but have intervened several times over loudspeakers to order them to wear a mask and keep a distance of 1.50 m, the police said. AFP. We demand the immediate lifting of restrictions on fundamental rights linked to the
authorities, hammered one of the organizers at the microphone.
We are a peaceful movement in which extremism, violence, anti-Semitism and ideas contemptuous of mankind have no place
, he added while previous demonstrations in Berlin had ended in excesses.
“Reich flags”
Police Leipzig was all the more worried about possible incidents as several counter-demonstrations were also planned in this city, a stronghold of the radical left and anarchist.
Of Reich flags
Germans in remembrance of the Empire that vanished after World War I were stirred in the crowd, according to the regional public channel MDR. She also claimed that activists of the neo-Nazi NPD party were seen among those gathered.
Saxony, the regional state in which Leipzig is located, is considered a bastion of the German far right which has been achieving its best scores for several years.
The organizers who define themselves as free thinkers
have been in the crosshairs of the authorities since at the end of August, several hundred demonstrators had forced security barriers to climb the steps of the Reichstag, seat of the Chamber of Deputies (Bundestag).
The gathering comes as the number of new daily infections hit a record high in Germany this Saturday, at more than 23,000.
Since Monday, restaurants, bars, cafes but also all museums, theaters, sports halls have closed their doors for four weeks.
Although Germany has not decreed a lockdown like in France or other European countries, these new restrictions have aroused some dissatisfaction in a population which has so far rather approved and scrupulously followed the health directives.
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