There will be no legal protest marches by vaccination opponents and pandemic deniers on Wednesday evening in Munich. Anyone who takes to the streets anyway risks a fine of up to 3,000 euros. A spokesman for the Munich police announced at noon that the city’s general decree, which had been issued shortly before, would be consistently enforced. It is still unclear how many officers will be on duty in the evening – but the number is likely to be in the range of the past Wednesdays, when up to 1000 police officers monitored compliance with the measures.
The city issued its new general decree at very short notice – almost at the same time as it came into effect at 11 a.m. The group “Munich Stands Up” may have become a victim of their own tactics of taking the security authorities by surprise with short-term changes. She had initially registered a demonstration march through the city, starting on Königsplatz. After the city approved a stationary meeting on Königsplatz two days ago – similar to the previous week – the group canceled its own rally on Tuesday. And she wants to continue to do so in the future: “If we are not allowed to have a moving meeting, we will consistently cancel every Wednesday,” the organizers wrote on Telegram.
Linked to the cancellation were calls for unregistered demonstrations. However, these are prohibited both by the general decree and, as a rule, by the Bavarian Assembly Act. “People have the courage and the means to make their protests unignorable, even outside of regular gatherings,” according to the organizers around the former “grassroots” candidate for the Bundestag, Melchior Ibing. The group announced: “Either we are finally allowed to walk on Wednesdays, or we cancel. The fact that many people are out and about in Kauffingerstrasse and the surrounding area is beyond our initiative. We will not do anything to prevent anyone from doing so.”
The organizers of “Munich Stands Up” then expressly pointed out that this time there was no general decree: “Everything else should be obvious.” Her followers took the hint and called for a meeting downtown. The city and police expect several thousand people to gather there. The city then issued a ban on such gatherings to avert danger, which is immediately enforceable.
“The general decree serves to prevent a proliferation of demonstrations that are in no way justifiable, with participants sometimes willing to use violence, in which minimum distances are not maintained and mouth-nose covers are not worn,” says a statement from the city. However, demonstrations against the fight against the pandemic can still be carried out after prior registration with the district administration department and in accordance with the conditions issued there, provided there are no immediate dangers to public safety – however, the prescribed registration period of 48 hours must be observed.
Anyone who cancels a registered meeting at short notice and calls for non-registered moves is showing that he “doesn’t care about the right to meet anyway,” said a police spokesman at noon. The mobilization takes place “not insignificantly via the Telegram channel of ‘Munich-stands-up’ and Telegram channels connected to this channel,” observed the Munich police. The cancellation and the subsequent communication on Telegram would have heated up the debate.
A shining thank you to everyone who follows the rules
In the meantime, the group is openly calling for people to come to Marienplatz, where the city will have light messages projected onto the facade of the town hall from 6 p.m. – according to Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD), a thank you to all Munich residents “who patiently follow the rules, who have been vaccinated and who help their fellow human beings in times of need.” The terms #science, #solidarity, #democracy and #cohesion will be on display. The organizers of the protests claim: “We all think the trendy hashtags are great.”
However, when organizer Ibing questioned parliamentary democracy in a speech last Wednesday on Königsplatz, around 2,000 supporters cheered him on. “The party system, as it is now, has degenerated into a keyboard played by the oligarchy,” said the spokesman for the “Munich Stands Up” group at the time. He and his followers then danced to a conspiracy-ideological song in which rapping was done against “media whores”, the “richest of the rich”, who have been initiating wars for 200 years and which the people follow “like rats”.
A year ago, the Research and Information Center for Antisemitism (Rias) Bavaria emphasized that the lyrics of the song “consciously or unconsciously (…) played with anti-Semitic images about an alleged Jewish world conspiracy”.