TENS OF THOUSANDS of people marched through central Brussels today to protest against reinforced Covid-19 measures that the government has imposed to counter the latest spike in coronavirus cases.
Many of those involved in the demonstration, which police estimated at 35,000 people, were also protesting against the strong advice to get vaccinated and any moves to impose mandatory jabs.
Shouting “Freedom, freedom, freedom”, and singing the anti-fascist song Bella Ciao, protesters lined up behind a banner saying “Together for Freedom”.
Among the crowd, signs varied from far-right insignia to the rainbow coalition flags of the LGBT community.
At the end of the protest, a few hundred people stayed behind to throw bottles and sticks at police, who used tear gas and a water cannon to try to disperse them.
The World Health Organisation said last week that Europe was a pandemic hot spot, the only region in which Covid-19 deaths were rising.
The autumn surge of infections is overwhelming hospitals in many Central and Eastern European nations, including Ukraine, Russia, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Over the past several days, there have been many anti-vaccination marches in European nations as one government after another tightened measures.
Dutch police arrested more than 30 people during unrest in The Hague and other towns in the Netherlands on Saturday, following much worse violence the previous night.
Austria is going into a 10-day national lockdown on Monday for all its residents, having first imposed a lockdown on the unvaccinated.
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