To protect this demonstration on Sunday afternoon, a lot of the police spread over the Theresienwiese in Munich, and that is not a bad thing because the podium is about the tasks of the police: What the many officers protect is a large protest rally against them Planned amendment to the Bavarian Police Task Act (PAG), which a majority of CSU and Free Voters wants to pass in the state parliament on Tuesday. The alliance “Worse is always possible – No to PAG 2.0” has therefore mobilized around 2000 people according to its own statements. The police count too and come to 1,300.
The rally is as peaceful as the police expected. The democratic anger is ignited above all by a planned tightening of the PAG, the so-called reliability check. Prime Minister Markus Söder and Interior Minister Joachim Hermann argue that it is only intended for security personnel at events. But then it should have been written precisely in the draft law, replies the NoPAG alliance and senses an instrument that could restrict the freedom of all citizens who want to attend an event in the future – such as this demo on the Theresienwiese.
After a large demonstration in Munich with tens of thousands against the PAG changes in 2018, the CSU-led state government announced that it would defuse the bill. What is now to be decided, however, is fundamentally displeasing to a broad alliance: parties such as the SPD, Greens, FDP and Left, more than 30 civil society organizations from the “lion fans against right” and the motorcycle rockers from the club “Kuhle Wampe” to the Bavarian Refugee Council on the Theresienwiese her voice against it.
“I’m not here today to protest against the police,” says FDP member of the state parliament, Daniel Föst, “but I’m tired of the way the CSU is taking our liberty bit by bit!” The planned law even makes “preventive detention” possible, criticizes Simon Strohmenger, spokesman for the alliance and representative of “Mehr Demokratie”, that our police are “keeping our police secret” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/. “In extreme cases, anyone can be checked by you in the run-up to an event, whether it is reliable and even allowed into the concert or stadium. ” There could be no question of defusing the PAG, “it has actually gotten worse,” said Strohmenger.
Far more than a thousand people gathered on the Theresienwiese on Sunday to protest against the police task law.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
If it is actually decided that way on Tuesday, everything is far from lost, he adds. Because there are still some constitutional lawsuits pending against it – Margarete Bause from the Greens and Carmen Wegge from the SPD state executive affirmed in their speeches that their parties will supplement the existing popular lawsuits if the desired “reliability test” becomes part of the PAG.
In Baus’s view, the CSU and Free Voters are “still pursuing an unconstitutional law”, and given the broken promise made in 2018 to defuse the PAG, “they cannot be rehabilitated”. Söder and Hermann described them as “recidivists”, freedom rights are in bad hands and it should not be “that we slide into Chinese conditions”. She knows very well “that many in the world envy us our rights to freedom – but that is why we have to defend them”.
While demo participants hold up boards with texts like “Söder, little villain, you don’t play with basic laws”, the Bavarian state spokesman for the Left, Ates Gürpinar, warns against being deceived by Söder. He’s already embracing trees and “demarcating himself against the right”, if that helps, he’ll show “his true reactionary face” at the PAG. Addressing free voters and the CSU, he adds: “You don’t vote for these parties – you organize resistance against them!” Johannes König, who belongs to the NoPAG alliance, differentiates on the microphone: “The CSU does it, and the cowardly Free Voters do the stirrup holders.”
The demo recorded a single incident at the end: A group of eight unconventional thinkers made a mess in the crowd, was pushed aside, heard distant words from the stage (“Corona deniers, piss off!”) – and ran away.