Health minister’s office vandalized by ‘Covid deniers’ — Analysis
Germany’s health minister said he was targeted by a ‘splinter group’ of ‘self-righteous’ protesters
German authorities are investigating after Health Minister Karl Lauterbach’s local constituency office in Cologne was vandalized on New Year’s Eve. The attack was attributed to anti-vaxxers and radicalized Covid deniers, Lauterbach said.
State police are asking for witnesses, but Lauterbach said to the dpa news agency that he suspects the same people who attacked the office in the past and sent him threats emails.
According to reports, the slogans that were smeared on the offices’ walls in December 2010 included: “Minister of Sickness,” “Murderer,”And “Psycho Lauterbach.”A fist-sized hole was apparently punched into one of the windows, according to images and reports.
“These people do not represent society, where the overwhelming [majority] is really sticking together and trying to do everything against the pandemic,”Lauterbach is a Social Democrat (SPD) member from the centre-left.
[The attackers]represent a small group of people who believe that it is necessary to follow a different route. That’s just sad.
Marco Wanderwitz (a lawmaker from the CDU in eastern Saxony) was also hit. The windows of his office in the town of Zwönitz were heavily damaged, according to German media reports.
Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland was told by Wanderwitz, that extreme-right radicals had been identified. “poisoning society”During the Covid-19 pandemic, and had since left “democracy in great danger.”
According to Deutsche Welle, Saxony and other eastern states have seen spikes in Covid cases, but are also among the country’s lowest vaccinated. After the December vaccine mandate was passed by the Bundestag, there were heated protests within Saxony.
There is also widespread skepticism over the government’s official Covid-19 data, with a new survey poll by Bild newspaper finding that 57% of respondents did not trust the statistics.
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