Member-only story
Thousands of Latvians marched peacefully against mandatory vaccination
Around 3000 (by some estimates, up to 5000) Latvians gathered late the evening of August 18 and into the night to protest what they called mandatory vaccination against Covid-19 for a range of public contact professions and jobs and obligatory testing of schoolchildren in order to re-open schools to in-person teaching.
The protestors, who at times chanted calls for the resignation of Prime Minister Krišjānis Karins and his four-party coalition government, seemed to reflect a mixture of vaccine skepticism sometimes driven by conspiracy theories and anger and frustration at months of pandemic restrictions on social and public gatherings, shopping and teaching in Latvian schools and universities.
A man who said his name was Armands told this reporter he was protesting against what he called the sorry state of the Latvian economy, which forced him and thousands of others to seek work outside the country. Armands said he had returned to his rural hometown after several years working in Britain.
The crowd, which gathered in front of the Riga Castle where President Egils Levits has his offices, was addressed from the top of a worn rented “party bus” by populist opposition Latvian parliamentarian Aldis Gobzems, who called for the rally in defiance of limits on large gatherings and social distancing rules.
