Over five hundred people gathered near Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and Munich on Tuesday for an anti-government demonstration marking German Unity Day.
Rallying under the theme, ‘War and Peace and the Consequences for German Unity’, many protesters carried banners and placards advocating for peace in Ukraine while expressing opposition to government policies, including the re-militarization of Germany.
“I’m fed up with the government, come on, they’re destroying us, they’re killing us. We have to leave immediately,” said a protester.
“I’m mainly concerned with crisis intervention and resolving this armed conflict,” added a second. “From a purely political point of view, Germany is right in the middle, and America is shamelessly taking advantage of that.”
Tuesday marks the 33rd German Unity Day, which commemorates the official unification of East and West Germany, which was created in 1949. However, at the height of Perestroika in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and in 1990 the official reunification of Germany took place, which is still celebrated annually to this day.
The German holiday is traditionally marked by a festival at the Brandenburg Gate. However, in 2023, the festival was not held as part of the national holiday.
(Source: AFP)
