Frankfurt (Oder) (dpa) – According to police, more than 2,000 people from Germany and Poland demonstrated against the Corona restrictions on Saturday in Frankfurt (Oder). The initiative “lateral thinking” from Duisburg had triggered the rally.
“Peace” and “Freedom” were shouted in German and Polish. Hundreds of people came to the German side from Słubice on the Polish side, some waving Polish flags.
Organizers and police repeatedly called on people to keep the minimum distance and wear masks. But many visitors to the “lateral thinking” demonstration did not stick to it. The organizers did not initially have a number of participants. According to the police, about 150 people came to a counter-demonstration. To this end, the alliance has “No place for Nazis in Frankfurt (Oder)” under the motto “Masked ball instead of corona deniers!” called.
The organizers of the “Lateral Thinking” demonstration appealed to participants to observe corona rules and warned that otherwise the police would interrupt the demonstration. The police called in German and Polish to comply with the guidelines. They expanded the demonstration area on the Oderpromenade so that more distance was possible. The officers also provided masks if someone said they didn’t have one.
The “lateral thinking” initiative doubts the Corona measures and speaks of a limitation of fundamental rights. For example, a cardboard figure in Frankfurt (Oder) said “Voodoo Virus Wahn”, on a poster “When you sleep in the Corona crisis, you wake up under the dictatorship!”. One participant was wearing a yellow protective suit and a sign with the text “Total Hygiene” in Gothic script.
Lateral thinking founder Michael Ballweg from Stuttgart, who was invited as a speaker, rejected the term ‘corona denier’ from critics and also turned against extremism. “We are a peaceful movement that has no place for extremism, violence, anti-Semitism and inhumane ideas,” he said.
Only four rallies with five participants each were allowed in Słubice on the Polish side. Police in Poland sealed the end of the city bridge between Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice on Saturday and did not allow visitors from Germany to enter without a mask. Polish civilians without masks were accompanied by the police.
The number of corona infections is increasing in both countries. In Poland, there were recently around 15,000 corona infections and 599 deaths within 24 hours, according to the government. However, according to data from the EU health agency ECDC, Poland is one of the countries in Europe with the lowest number of tests performed per 100,000 inhabitants.
According to media reports, the protection of the constitution at the federal and state levels looks like the protests against the Corona requirements will grow into a new type of extremism. According to reports from WDR, NDR and “Süddeutscher Zeitung”, this emerges from a paper to be discussed at the conference of interior ministers on 9 December. So we are talking about “extremism that is not one of the phenomena common to the constitutional protection group,” that is, it cannot be classified as, say, left-wing, right-wing, or Islamist.
Right-wing extremists, “Reichsburgers” and conspiracy theories also increasingly played a role, but they did not dominate the protests, the report said – the Federal Office had already issued similar statements several times. However, many protesters also did not distance themselves from the radicals by denying their statements or identifying them as unproblematic. According to the information, several Federal States Constitution Protection Offices conducted the analysis under the direction of the Federal Constitution Protection Office.
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November 28, 2020 at 11:54PM
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