Europe has escalated violence against restrictive measures this weekend

Acts of violence mark protests in European countries this weekend over new restrictions imposed after the rise in Covid-19 cases on the continent.

Riots broke out in The Hague, Netherlands, on Saturday over the Dutch government’s new measures against the Dutch government’s coronavirus.

The Netherlands went back to a partial blockade that should last three weeks from last Saturday (13) and now plans to ban the entry of unvaccinated people in some places.

Five police officers were injured during the clashes in The Hague, one was taken to hospital with a concussion and two suffering hearing damage from fireworks, police said in a statement.

“The group started fires, committed destruction, assaulted drivers and threw rocks and heavy fireworks at police officers,” police said, confirming that 19 arrests had been made.

They added that a protester threw a stone through the window of an ambulance transporting a patient to a hospital.

Thousands of protesters took part in a peaceful march in the capital, Amsterdam, on Saturday.

Dutch public broadcaster NOS also reported riots in the city of Urk and in cities in the southern province of Limburg. The protests followed violent clashes on Friday night (19) in the port city of Rotterdam, during which police were forced to fire to disperse the crowd, and 51 people were arrested.

Elsewhere, some 40,000 people on Saturday filled the streets of Vienna in the country’s biggest coronavirus-related protest to date.

Police tried to quell the protest and when the “climate was about to get worse” they stopped fining those who didn’t wear masks, said Franz Eigner, vice president of the Vienna police, during a press conference on Sunday.

Some officers had “an unidentified liquid” sprayed over them. Protesters were trying to blind a helicopter with a laser, Eigner said.

A small number of protesters were “extremely violent”, Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said during the press conference, which he associated with the “extremist right-wing scene”.

Austria will reintroduce a national partial blockade on Monday (22) and make vaccinations against the coronavirus mandatory from February next year.

More than 1,400 police were deployed across the country to maintain public order, according to a police statement. Pepper spray was used in a “hot” protest in central Vienna, the police statement added.

France sent dozens of elite police and counterterrorism officials to its Caribbean island of Guadeloupe on Saturday (20) after looting and arson during the night, defying the nightly curfew.

The island’s mayor presented the stay order on Friday after protests against the vaccine’s approval turned into violence the night before. The Interior Ministry said 31 people were arrested.

About 15,000 people protested Saturday in Zagreb, Croatia, against government measures against the coronavirus. As of Monday, only people with Covid-19 passports will be able to enter public and government buildings in Croatia.

35 thousand in Brussels

About 35,000 people took to the streets in Brussels, Belgium’s capital, on Sunday to protest government restrictions on the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, police said.

There were some clashes between protesters and police, with protesters throwing smoke bombs and fireworks, reports Le Soir.

The situation later normalized, police said.

Belgium tightened its coronavirus restrictions on Wednesday, requiring wider use of masks and forcing homework, as cases increased in the country’s fourth wave of Covid-19s.

With information from Sabine Siebold of Reuters

(Translated text. Read the original here.)