Erfurt (dpa/th) - According to the police, a total of around 22,000 people took to the streets in Thuringia on Monday to demonstrate against the rising prices in the wake of the energy crisis and the government's corona policy. Around 3,100 people came together in Altenburg alone, as a police spokesman said on Tuesday. About 2,500 people had also gathered in Gera. Leinefelde (1800), Sonneberg (1500) and Weimar (1000) were also focal points.
According to the police, 18 of the 43 meetings were not registered. These included the meetings in Ilmenau and Nordhausen, each with around 1000 people, as well as Arnstadt with around 600 people.
According to the police, the meetings in Thuringia remained largely undisturbed. According to the Erfurt police, the rallies and banners they carried addressed “the current political situation, the well-known corona policy as well as the Ukraine/Russia conflict and the current energy crisis”. There were no relevant incidents. However, traffic was disrupted by the move. Several thousand people had already taken to the streets in the previous weeks.
On Monday, posters in Gera said, among other things, "We used to have honor and pride, today we have Habeck and Scholz" and "We are the red line". The demonstration here was led by people who carried flags of the "Free Thuringia" group. So far, the group has mainly appeared in the context of demonstrations against the corona measures. Their equivalent is the party "Freie Sachsen", which was founded last year and is classified as a suspected case by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. According to the Saxon Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the party is right-wing extremist.
The protests have recently become particularly popular in eastern Germany. According to police estimates, more than 100,000 people demonstrated on German Unity Day about two weeks ago at dozens of rallies in Thuringia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
