Despite the inclement weather, thousands of people are protesting against the government’s measures for the Covid-19 pandemic in Prague’s Letná Plain on Sunday. Police estimated that between 2,500 and 3,000 people were there at 13:30. Dozens of police officers are on-site supervising the event.
People began gathering on Letná before 13:00, many of them equipped with Czech flags. Stands of various parties and initiatives, such as Trikolóra, Svobodné, and the Manifest movement, are located at the event, expected to last until 20:00. The event was due to start at 1 pm but started a little later as more people kept arriving at the reported time. After the opening, at about 13:30, representatives of the “Open the Czech Republic-Chcpl PES” movement took the stage, followed by speakers who criticized the current measures taken by the government against the epidemic.
Speakers included health professionals, lawyers, and representatives of the movements involved. In most of the speeches, they spoke against vaccination and government restrictions. According to them, human rights are violated by the measures, and the state restricts human freedom under the pretext of fighting the disease.
In response, people chanted slogans such as “Freedom!” or “We’ve had enough!” In addition to the flags, people also held several signs and banners with slogans such as “Defend your children,” “Release the ivermectin,” “Vaccine is a business,” “I am not a guinea pig,” “My body, my choice,” “Defend our children from the perversion of the state” or “Vaccinate? Over your dead bodies! ”
“What’s happening now has long since ceased to be about whether you are vaccinated or unvaccinated. This has long been about how they are restricting our lives, violating the law, and driving us back to the totalitarian regime that we are experiencing,” underlined Zuzana Majerová Zahradníková, chair ofTrikolóra. David Tesař, chair of the Manifest movement, and Jana Volfová, chair of the Free Bloc, also spoke about the totalitarianism of an Orwellian state that citizens face.
Other speakers were singer Daniel Landa, former MP Lubomír Volný, Libor Vondráček of the Svobodné party, Tomáš Vandas, chair of the Workers’ Party of Social Justice, Adam B. Bartoš and Michal Semín, vice-chair of the D.O.S.T. Action,
There is also a beer stall at which a queue has formed dozens of meters long, although according to government measures, alcohol cannot be consumed in public from 18:00 on Friday. None of the participants wore a face mask or respirator either. After 16:00, the police warned the participants that they should follow the anti-epidemic measures, such as keeping a distance between them or using masks, but the demonstrators laughed at the instructions of the police.