Thousands of people come to Berlin at the weekend to protest against the Corona policy, although numerous demonstrations have been banned. Arrests are made in clashes with the police.
Berlin – Berlin’s Senator for the Interior, Andreas Geisel (SPD), and the police union have rated the police’s actions at the meetings of opponents of the Corona policy in Berlin as professional and appropriate.
Despite the ban on large demonstrations, several thousand people marched through the capital on Sunday. They could gather again and again in groups in different parts of the city. There were clashes between protesters and police forces.
Meanwhile, three demonstrations scheduled for Monday have been banned. The spokesman for the initiative “lateral thinking 711”, Michael Ballweg, also said that the group had again registered for a rally with 22,500 participants in Berlin for August 29th.
A 49-year-old man who did not come from Berlin died during the protests in Berlin. He complained of a tingling sensation in his arm and chest in the course of an identity check on Sunday afternoon. Initial measures were taken immediately by police forces until an alarmed ambulance immediately took care of the supply. The man died in a hospital, the police said. The public prosecutor took over the investigation. According to the police, an autopsy was planned.
Regarding the tactics of the police, Interior Senator Geisel told the “Tagesspiegel” (online) on Monday: “We cannot see that the police were not in control of the situation”. The emergency services were aware that the protesters’ tactic would be to perform in smaller groups in many parts of the city. That made the situation complicated. “According to the information available to us, the Berlin police and the external forces acted appropriately and professionally.”
The federal government reacted with concern to the riots in the unauthorized “lateral thinkers” protests. There were also “attacks on people from the protest events,” said the deputy government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer on Monday. “The federal government perceives this with great concern.”
The Federal Ministry of the Interior announced in April that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution was observing individual actors and parts of the Corona protest movement nationwide using intelligence services. The reason for this is the “constitutional protection-relevant delegitimization of the state” that they pursue.
The Stuttgart group “lateral thinking 711” is regarded as a kind of nucleus of the protest movement that is now active throughout Germany. “A lateral thinker is not a lateral thinker” – the scene is very heterogeneous, emphasized the spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Steve Alter. A new form of extremism arose in the pandemic, in which different actors “are united by the goal of destabilizing and delegitimizing the state institutions, the state as such”.
The interior expert of the Union parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Thorsten Frei (CDU), told the “Rheinische Post”, which appeared in Düsseldorf, that the heads of the lateral thinkers had cleverly coordinated the participants with messenger services, which is why new gatherings of protesters kept coming together. “As a result, the strategy of quickly dispersing the crowds and frustrating the participants was the right one. Also that a certain strength was demonstrated. “
The SPD member of the Bundestag and interior expert Dirk Wiese told the “Rheinische Post”: “Some of them have finally renounced the principles of our free democratic basic order and stopped thinking.”
The spokesman for the police union (GdP) in Berlin, Benjamin Jendro, told the German press agency that the ban on individual assemblies shows that the potential for violence has by no means been underestimated. “We also have to be honest, everything was called into service that wasn’t up in the tree at three. We’re talking about colleagues who have already worked 40-50 hours a week and then were on duty for 18 hours on Sunday. ”All the more reason to estimate that, in view of the enormous propensity for violence and constant change in situation, they act so professionally and coolly Would have kept their heads.
Meanwhile, the founder of the initiative “lateral thinking 711”, Michael Ballweg, doubted the number of people named by the police who were involved in the protests across Berlin on Sunday. A police spokesman had spoken of at least 5,000 people on Sunday evening. “In our estimation, there were significantly more,” said Ballweg on Monday.
The Berlin police had banned a number of rallies and demonstrations at the end of last week. This also included a “lateral thinking 711” rally on Straße des 17. Juni, for which the initiative had registered 22,500 participants.
Regarding the behavior of the police towards participants in the protests on Sunday, Ballweg said: “I don’t want to generalize. We saw peaceful officers doing their job, we also saw a lot of police violence. ”The action taken against peaceful demonstrators was very disproportionate. The police, on the other hand, reported attacks against emergency services. The police reported that attempts were also made to break through barriers. dpa
