Tens of thousands of protesters marched in Austria today for the third weekend in a row against government measures to fight coronavirus, mainly vaccination, which will be mandatory from February, police said.
Arrests were made for disturbing public order, according to police who recorded “more than 40,000” protesters in Vienna, after several rallies in the capital.
According to the Police, some protesters flew “pyrotechnic mechanisms” to law enforcement forces, which responded using a pepper spray and an antisense in which 1,500 people participated.
Austria imposed a new partial quarantine on November 22, which will run until December 11, and is the first country in the European Union to announce that vaccination will be mandatory from February 1.
Measures the government defended citing a fourth wave of Covid-19 cases putting pressure on hospital intensive care units and a 67% vaccination rate, one of the lowest in Western Europe.
Since the start of the new quarantine, the number of infections in the country of 8.9 million people has slowed down, from 13,000 per day to less than 10,000, without the measure having secured unanimous support.
According to media reports, entire families with children traveled and crossed all over Austria to protest in Vienna this Saturday.
Hostility to partial quarantine and compulsory vaccination is encouraged by the far-right FPÖ, which accuses the Conservative / Green coalition government of “dictatorship”.
The far-right “Movement for the Preservation of Identity” was among the protesters today, according to the media. Earlier this week, the new head of Austria’s domestic intelligence service, Omar Pirchner, said some opponents of the coronavirus were “the biggest threat to us at the moment”.
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