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Making room for goods transport: The Canadian police have broken up the trucker blockade that made the headlines
Photo: Nathan Denette / dpa
Canadian police cleared the important Ambassador Bridge between the province of Ontario and the US metropolis of Detroit on Sunday.
Despite a court order on Friday, truck drivers and other demonstrators initially continued to block the important border crossing.
According to the court order, they should have left the Ambassador Bridge by 7 p.m. local time on Friday evening.
On Saturday, when many demonstrators were already leaving their place, a massive police presence began with the evacuation.
Initially, however, it was not able to get all the trucks off the bridge.
According to the authorities, arrests were made on Sunday.
There was talk of twelve people who were arrested without resistance and seven towed vehicles.
According to the information, the bridge was free again around noon and the access road cleared.
However, the border crossing will only reopen "when it is safe," said the mayor of the border town of Windsor, Drew Dilkens.
"The national economic crisis at the Ambassador Bridge" but "came to an end today."
Tens of thousands of trips a day
The border crossing is a major artery and is typically used by more than 40,000 commuters and tourists every day.
Before the protests that paralyzed traffic, trucks carrying $323 million worth of goods crossed the bridge every day - more than a quarter of all goods traffic between the US and Canada.
While the Ambassador Bridge should soon be passable again, other border crossings remained blocked by opponents of the Corona measures.
Scores of other protesters also flocked to Canada's capital, Ottawa, where the streets have been clogged by hundreds of trucks for over two weeks.
The self-proclaimed "freedom convoy" is not over yet.
The truck drivers' actions had begun in protest at the vaccination and quarantine rules for border crossings introduced by Canada and the USA in mid-January.
Unvaccinated Canadian truck drivers must therefore go into a 14-day quarantine when returning from the USA, while US drivers without a vaccination are not allowed into the country at all.
A role model for European demonstrators
The protests by Canadian truckers, which are sometimes fueled by right-wingers, have inspired opponents of the corona measures worldwide.
In France, thousands of demonstrators from all parts of the country had driven cars, mobile homes and vans to the outskirts of Paris in the past few days to join a protest convoy.
Among the participants were opponents of vaccination certificates and supporters of the "yellow vest" movement, but also people who protested against the government in general.
The police mobilized 7,500 emergency services to prevent blockages.
On Saturday afternoon, demonstrators managed to get onto the Champs-Elysées on foot and with more than a hundred vehicles.
The police broke up the illegal demonstration with tear gas, arrested 97 people and issued 513 warnings.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, 32,100 people took part in approved rallies against the corona measures on Saturday, almost 7,600 of them in Paris.
Next destination: Brussels
Prime Minister Jean Castex said the right to demonstrate and freedom of expression were constitutionally guaranteed.
But there is no right to “block others or prevent them from coming and going”.
Some of the protesters from Paris planned to continue to Brussels, where a "European meeting" is to take place on Monday.
The Belgian authorities have also banned the planned convoys.
A convoy of around 300 vehicles reached Lille in northern France near the Belgian border on Sunday.
In The Hague, opponents of the corona measures from all over the Netherlands also drove their vehicles into the city center on Saturday.
According to media reports, hundreds of cars blocked the famous Binnenhof, where the Dutch Parliament sits, among other things.
The police gave the demonstrators a deadline of until the afternoon to leave the city, which was also observed.
mboe/AFP
