Slovenia: protests against Covid measures
Protests against coronavirus restrictions have turned violent in Ljubljana. The police used tear gas and water cannons after demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails at the parliament building. The national press shows varying degrees of understanding for the protests, which were mainly directed against stricter testing requirements for the unvaccinated.
Government provoked the violence
The government has brought these protests on itself by imposing complicated regulations that force many people to take expensive tests just to go about their daily activities, Dnevnik criticises:
“When you stop people from going to see the doctor in the fight against the epidemic; when you stipulate one type of rapid test for employees to go to work but another type for buying goods or using services (both of which, of course, have to be paid for); when you drive motorists away from filling stations; when you replace a series of nonsensical administrative measures with even more nonsense, then you don't have to be a virus denier to want to vent your anger outside the parliament buildings, at policemen or at shop windows.”
Democracy must set clear limits
But Romana Tomc, MEP for the ruling party SDS, demands harsh punishments for rioters in Demokracija:
“An attack on a national parliament is an attack on democracy. Inadmissible, reprehensible, criminal. I hope that the police and all those responsible will come down hard on offenders. How long will we have to endure this vandalism? How long will they continue to lie, harass, incite and insult? Until someone pays with their life? I hope this doesn't happen and that people start to realise what inciting intolerance and trying to seize power at any cost leads to. There will be elections soon in which those who are now inciting the protests can fight fairly for votes!”