STOCKHOLM (AP) – Swedish police on Saturday dispersed hundreds of people who gathered in central Stockholm to protest the Swedish government’s restrictions on coronavirus.
Swedish officials said the demonstration – the first major protest against restrictions on coronavirus in the country – was illegal because it was carried out without permission.
Stockholm police said on their website that they decided to shorten the meeting soon after it started, when the number of participants exceeded the limits for public meetings under Swedish pandemic laws.
Video footage in the Swedish media showed a considerable number without masks gathering at Medborgarplatsen square, not far from the capital’s historic center. Local media estimated that 300 to 500 people attended.
Swedish tabloids Aftonbladet and Expressen reported that the demonstration was widely dispersed peacefully, but six policemen were injured after they started fighting with some protesters who did not want to leave.
Aftonbladet said the demonstration was organized by a group called Freedom Sweden, which believes that the COVID-19 rules restrict human freedom.
“There are so many people in Sweden who have grown tired of these restrictions, which are really unfounded, and want to put their foot down and show that we no longer agree with that,” Filip Sjostrom, an organizer at Freedom Sweden, said Expressen.
According to Expressen, the protesters included far-right activists, people against vaccines and some families with children.
At the start of the pandemic, Sweden, unlike most other European countries, chose to keep its society broadly open with few restrictions, but the government has taken a substantially tougher stance in recent months.
Sweden had more than 13,000 deaths in the pandemic, while its Nordic neighbors, Denmark, Norway and Finland, which chose to impose restrictions on the coronavirus much earlier, have a combined number of COVID-19 deaths of 3,777.
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