The protests are related to covid restrictions. I think they are saying that we suddenly support anti-lockdown protesters now, when they used to be absolutely reviled barely a year ago when the same protests happened in the west.
All which were never "cancelled", school went on and freedom to assembly always imvolved goverment approval. That being said, some of the most massive demonstrations I can remember tool place during Covid in Germany.
Oh, so we are back to litterally tens of thousands of people at non-approved demonstrations sayong they cannot voice opposition anymore as we had during Covid...
Well, the effect of the protests is tempered somewhat by the fact that they are all outdoors. So the risk of Covid + Protests is significantly lower than that of Covid + No Lockdown.
It doesn't seem strange at all. None of the protests have had anything close to the sheer size of the rally, nor have they been attracting participants from such a broad area. Most of the protests have been very localized in size and scope, so while they may help spread the coronavirus within a community, they have much less potential for spreading coronavirus between communities.
I don't think the "white paper" statement in these protests is about zero-covid policy exactly - it's clearly about censorship and freedom of expression.
The zero-covid policy precipitated the unrest - guess where covid policy and freedom of expression intersect? That's right, self-determination / democracy.
Most of these protests are not directly about democracy yet, but they are definitely hinting toward it.
There were some protests against anti covid measure a few weeks ago that got quite a bit of publicity due to taking place on the iconic Old Town Square in Prague - but nothing relly major or really ongoing.
The situation is not perfect and the protest not without merit, as the government preatty much squandered any success we had handling the first wave of covid by doing preatty much no preparations, releasing almost all restrictions and then failed to respond in time when things turned for the worse in september.
I guess it can make people angry, if their livelyhood is in danger due to the restrictive measures needed after you fuck up the initial response to the second wave like we did here. Still violent protest is not really an answer and it was indeed an one-off so far. Hopefully people will remeber at least a bit of they not to vote the populist currently in power during the next elections next year.
Also there are regular protests in Belarus and now even in Poland these days that are bigger by many orders of magnitude that what we managed to pull off here since the Velvet Revolution when indeed preatty much everyone was in the streats, which resulted in the fall of the soviet aligned comunist regime back then.
Those protests happened because new lockdowns were introduced in the EU at that time and the Labour party was calling for harsher restrictions again despite all evidence from South Africa suggesting that Omicron is nothing but a super mild cold and people already being double jabbed anyway. People were terrified of another lockdown and that is why they went protesting to offer a counter voice to opposition party MPs who tried to instil another wave of fear.
I never went to any protest, not just this but in general, but I was very pleased that there were huge protests in the UK and elsewhere at that time, because I had enough of restricting my own life for the sake of others.
Also, somehow, after two years of calling anyone protesting for basic rights (anti-lockdown protests) a covid denier, an idiot, grandma killer, etc. we've gone to "brave protesters" in china.
I agree. That isn't to diminish the protests at all or say they're unnecessary, but I think COVID has added to the fervor. People feel cooped up and on edge right now
no different than what was happening in Victoria, Australia recently regarding COVID protests, people getting arrested at home for promoting the protest on facebook etc.
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