Liège (Belgium) (AFP)
About a thousand people, according to police, demonstrated on Sunday in a public park in Liège, in eastern Belgium, to protest against anti-Covid restrictions, including the wearing of masks.
The demonstration, organized at the call of several groups of citizens, took on the appearance of a big dancing party, around a sound system mounted on a small platform with a DJ, noted an AFP-TV journalist.
Many demonstrators did not wear masks and sometimes danced clinging to each other, especially when forming a caterpillar waving to the rhythm of the music.
"I understand that some are afraid", but "psychologically speaking, it is much more urgent to be here than to be at home locked up," said Valène Mewissen, a student who had joined the rally.
She assured that several gatherings of young people who intervened recently in this park of La Boverie, well known to the students of Liège, "had shown that there is no increase in cases here" in the large Walloon city.
In this rally, which began around 11:00 a.m. (9:00 a.m. GMT) and which numbered around 500 people at midday, the crowd gradually became denser, taking advantage of the mild weather, "to reach a thousand people at the end of the day. - midday, "said a spokesperson for the local police.
Belgium entered a new phase of stricter restrictions on Saturday, providing in particular access to non-essential shops by appointment only for four weeks.
Against the backdrop of the rapid spread of the English variant of the coronavirus, throughout the country, schools and universities will remain closed from Monday, effectively extending the Easter school holidays.
They will last three weeks (instead of two), until Monday, April 19.
"Now we are really in a new pandemic, the virus has become much more virulent, is transmitted much more easily," Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said Sunday evening on public television (RTBF).
"We also see that there are many more young people in hospitals, we must break this third wave", continued the Flemish liberal leader.
According to official figures, the number of Covid patients hospitalized in intensive care (more than 700 identified on Sunday) has doubled in the space of a month.
© 2021 AFP