More than a thousand people gathered in the German capital Berlin on Sunday. According to the organizers, the rally called for “freedom and the restoration of basic human rights” in the Corona crisis.
The Berlin police had previously announced that they would strictly enforce the ban on such gatherings. Violent confrontations between demonstrators and police broke out. Dozens of arrests have been made, but no details are known at this time. A demonstrator was thrown to the ground and arrested by the police. According to the police, he collapsed during the arrest and died a short time later in the hospital.
German mainstream media, including Focus Online, Spiegel and Berliner Morgenpost accused demonstrators of attacking the Berlin police. The taz wrote of a “few hundred” participants who were all “conspiracy theorists”.
But one witness reported that he personally saw, with the exception of one scene, non-violent demonstrators. Also, the fraudulent attempts to portray the participants in anti-Corona demos as right-wing radicals seemed completely absurd in view of the composition of the protests.
In many cases, the particularly brutal police operation led to the backlash from the crowd. The Berlin police were apparently overwhelmed by the crowd of demonstrators and could not manage to prevent the march.
The real scandal was the ban on the demonstration because only days ago, a legal Gay Pride march had been allowed by authorities.