Below are three German-language articles about various aspects of the COVID-19 scam, all translated by Hellequin GB.
Germany recently banned demonstrations against the vax mandate. If I remember correctly, fear of the Omicron variant was the ostensible rationale. As a result, citizens began going on “Monday walks” — a venerable tradition from the DDR — to make their point. Now the government of North Rhine-Westphalia is considering requiring that walkers register their event in advance, just as organizers of demonstrations have to do.
Monday walks in NRW soon subject to approval
In Germany, not only is the number of Corona demonstrations and walks increasing, but also the number of participants. This puts more pressure on the police. In the future, NRW wants to count walks as meetings that are subject to registration.
In more and more places in Germany, citizens are taking to the streets on Mondays to go for a walk. The number of participants in these so-called Monday walks is also increasing. People want to use it to express their protest against the Corona measures. Above all, they worry about the impending obligation to get vaccinated and the division of society into the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
In this context, the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia is considering a new legal assessment of the situation. In a letter to all police authorities in the state on Monday, the NRW Ministry of the Interior declared walks to be gatherings, writes the Rheinische Post. This was justified by, among other things, the fact that the protests were only ostensibly spontaneous, but in reality were mostly arranged via the messenger service Telegram.
This difference is important with regard to the right of assembly: “Something different applies to assemblies that are currently being formed for current reasons. There is no obligation to register for such so-called spontaneous meetings. Because Article 8 Paragraph 1 GG also protects the right to assemble spontaneously.”
But even if it is allegedly just “regular private walks with friends and acquaintances”, the political character predominates, according to the ministry letter. That doesn’t change even if you don’t wave posters or chant slogans.
Important criterion: non-violent
In this context, NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) called for the protests to be registered. Reul said this to the WAZ [Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung], as reported by Deutschlandfunk. The “RP” goes on to say that the police always write a report for unannounced gatherings. No “ringleader” recognizable against unknown.
According to Interior Minister Reul, the protest marches cannot simply be dissolved. Violating the obligation to register a meeting is punishable, but is not enough to end a demonstration. “A dissolution is only permissible if public safety is directly endangered, if there is an escalation of violence and there are no milder means,” said Reul.
The Minister of the Interior referred to a judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court in the 1980s “in connection with the protests against the Brokdorf nuclear power plant”. The Brokdorf demonstration in February 1981 may still be remembered by many older supporters and politicians from the Greens and the Left.
The largest demo to date in Germany, with around 100,000 demonstrators, was banned by the authorities, which was later ruled unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court. 10,000 police officers were on duty. The number of injured on each side was around 130, writes the SHZ [Schleswig-Holsteinischer Zeitungsverlag] in a review.
Usually these walks are peaceful
In contrast, the Monday walks in Germany are peaceful, for example on January 3 in Ludwigshafen, Helmstedt, Nagold, Mülheim or Erding. According to the police, 17,000 people were out and about that Monday in Thuringia alone, and in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania more than 12,000 citizens in around 20 cities walked through the night on registered “light walks”, reports the Stern, 4,000 in Rostock alone, 2,000 in Schwerin and 1,800 in Neubrandenburg. In Bavaria, 10,000 walkers were estimated, mostly peaceful, it is said. In Nuremberg, for example, there were 4,200 peaceful demonstrators. In Berlin, several hundred demonstrators shouted “lying press” in front of the ZDF head office in the capital — no further incidents, according to the police.
In Lichtenstein, Saxony, violent youths mingled with pedestrians and attacked the police, and in Thuringia some scuffles and “aggressive behavior” by some demonstrators were registered. In Weimar, two camps had to be separated from each other when 20 people tried to stop a march of 150 people. 2,500 people demonstrated in Magdeburg. It is said that bottles were thrown at the police and pyrotechnics were used.
Poll: The East is demo-friendly
According to a recent survey by the market and social research institute Insa-Consulere on behalf of the evangelical news agency Idea, around 52 percent of those surveyed had no understanding of the Corona demos. Although a narrow majority of those surveyed were skeptical about the Corona demos, one in three of the other respondents (35 percent) stated that they understood the demonstrators in principle and nine percent were undecided. Only four percent preferred not to provide any information. In summary, 48 percent — actively or passively — showed no rejection of the Corona protests.
In general, there was more of a tendency to reject the protests in western Germany (53 percent) than in eastern Germany, which had experienced the DDR (46 percent). On the other hand, according to the newspaper Rheinpfalz for the survey, the over 60-year-olds (68 percent) in particular rejected the protests. While the younger and middle-age groups showed less rejection (42 to 48 percent).
Green supporters strongly against Corona protests
According to the newspaper, there were also differences in attitudes towards parties among those surveyed. While 75 percent of the AfD supporters among them had sympathy for the demonstrators, there was a certain distance to the runner-up. The Free Democrats still showed 43 percent understanding and at 40 percent expressed their lack of understanding among the FDP supporters.
The situation was different for the other parties, where the lack of understanding prevailed. 68 percent of the supporters of the Social Democrats found it wrong, 67 percent of the Union [CDU/CSU] friends had no understanding and 55 percent of the Left expressed their lack of understanding of the demos. The Greens supporters were the ones who voted the most against the Corona protests. Of them, 70 percent showed no understanding for the demonstrators. This is also surprising because the Greens are always said to be against the use of genetic engineering.
There are currently five vaccines approved in the EU, all of which use genetic engineering: the mRNA vaccines from BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna, the vector vaccines from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, and the new protein-based vaccine from Novavax.
Nearly 600 illegal migrants have been interdicted by the Polish border authorities so far this year as they attempted to cross from Belarus into Poland. Meanwhile, nearly 200 illegal migrants crossed the English Channel and landed in the UK over the weekend.
