About 1,400 policemen were on duty to monitor the protest.
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Tens of thousands of people rallied in Vienna on Saturday to protest the restrictions imposed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in Austria, including a mandatory COVID-19 vaccine and a stay-at-home order for those in need. unvaccinated people.
About 1,400 police officers were on duty to oversee the protest, which drew some 44,000 people, and followed a similar protest in the Austrian capital last week.
Police said three people were arrested on charges including using fireworks and defying a requirement to wear a mask. Journalists covering the event, which began in Heldenplatz square, were attacked with snowballs and ice, and one reporter was the victim of an attack, police said.
The crowd was addressed by Herbert Kickl, leader of the right-wing Austrian Liberal Party, who has attacked the government’s response to the pandemic. He said the public did not realize they were being “kicked in the ass” by the government, and said the protests would continue.
Separately, about 2,500 people protested the restrictions in Klagenfurt, while 150 protested in Linz.
Facing a daily rise in infections, Austria last month became the first country in Western Europe to adopt a containment measure and said it would make vaccinations mandatory from February.
Protesters in Vienna carried banners of “No Mandatory Vaccination” and “Get Your Hands Off Children”, who chanted “We are the people” and “protest”.
Austria, a country with a population of 8.9 million, has reported 1.2 million coronavirus infections and more than 13,000 deaths since the pandemic broke out last year.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
