As if the world weren’t upside-down enough, authorities in Germany are talking about taking people deemed a threat to society and putting them into “detention centers.”
Sound ominously familiar? What could possibly make this happen, apart from the Chinese virus?
Germans who refuse to quarantine after COVID-19 exposure will be held in detention under new rules being readied by regional authorities, according to a report from German sources summed up at Dailymail.com. The German state of Saxony has confirmed plans to hold quarantine-defiers in a fenced-off section of a refugee camp set to be built in the next month. The facility will ostensibly be used only for people who have repeatedly flouted lockdown rules and refused to self-isolate.
Officials in Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany say two hospital rooms will be used to detain repeat offenders, who will be under guard. In Brandenburg, authorities will set aside a section of a refugee center, while Schleswig-Holstein will use an area within a juvenile detention facility.
Legal experts told Die Welt that state governments have powers to detain people for breaching quarantine rules under the very recent Disease Protection Act, passed by the German Bundestag last March and renewed in November.
Encouragingly, the plan has been widely criticized. MP Joana Cotar accused the Saxony government of “reading too much Orwell.”
German authorities have faced heavy criticism for their management of the pandemic, with proposals for national vaccine mandates branded “social dynamite” by opposition politicians.
It all plays out as Chancellor Angela Merkel threatens a “mega-lockdown” and even suspending public transport after sparking a public backlash in Britain by calling “mutant” COVID the “British virus.”
Mass-selling newspaper Bild reported Merkel wants to shut down Germany almost totally, amid a general fear of the fast-traveling variant of coronavirus first detected in southern England.
