The group attempted to perform a haka. Photo / Der Spiegel
The group attempted to perform a haka. Photo / Der Spiegel
Video has emerged of a group of German protesters attempting to perform a haka in support of their campaign against that country's lockdown laws.
Their cringeworthy effort was shared by German media organisation Der Spiegel, as part of a compilation of lockdown protesters and Covid-deniers.
"For several weeks we havebeen reporting on demonstrations against the coronavirus measures of politics. The arguments against it are as simple as crazy: the virus does not exist, it is harmless and there are powerful elites behind it," Der Spiegel wrote in a caption that accompanied the video.
The clip shows a small group being led in the haka by a woman in the middle of a town square.
The participants wear shirts with the slogan: "I'm beautiful, I'm safe, I'm wild, I'm free".
Speaking to a reporter, one man claims that performing the haka gives the group strength.
In other protests, far-right extremists tried to storm the German parliament building on Saturday following a protest against the country's pandemic restrictions, but were intercepted by police and forcibly removed.
The incident occurred after a daylong demonstration by tens of thousands of people opposed to the wearing of masks and other government measures intended to stop the spread of the new coronavirus. Police ordered the protesters to disband halfway through their march around Berlin after participants refused to observe social distancing rules, but a rally near the capital's iconic Brandenburg Gate took place as planned.
Footage of the incident showed hundreds of people, some waving the flag of the German Reich of 1871-1918 and other far-right banners, running toward the Reichstag building and up the stairs.
Police confirmed on Twitter that several people had broken through a cordon in front of Parliament and "entered the staircase of the Reichstag building, but not the building itself".
"Stones and bottles were thrown at our colleagues," police said. "Force had to be used to push them back."
Germany's top security official condemned the incident.
"The Reichstag building is the workplace of our Parliament and therefore the symbolic centre of our liberal democracy," Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said in a statement.
"It's unbearable that vandals and extremists should misuse it," he said, calling on authorities to show "zero tolerance".
