New Zealand Showed Canada How It Handles 'Freedom Convoy' Protesters With Over 100 Arrests
The anti-lockdown protesters were following Canada's lead.
The streets of Wellington, New Zealand were looking a lot like Ottawa earlier this week, after a "Freedom Convoy" camped outside the country's Parliament to protest vaccine mandates and lockdowns.
But New Zealand has not been as lenient as Canada with the convoy.
Police arrested over 120 protesters outside Parliament on Thursday, while trying to forcefully remove hundreds more from the area around the building, Reuters reports. The group is reportedly much smaller after the arrests.
The protesters showed up earlier this week in a convoy inspired by the one that is currently camped outside of Canada's Parliament. Their issues are also the same: to fight against vaccine, mask and lockdown policies meant to stop the spread of COVID-19.
The New Zealand Police urged protesters to "leave the grounds peacefully" before they moved in, in a statement issued Thursday afternoon.
The statement said: “We continue to acknowledge people’s rights to protest; however, those who behave unlawfully will face arrest.”
Police warned that the area was closed to the public, and when protesters didn't move they moved in and arrested 122 people for trespassing and obstruction.
The police also posted updates on their Twitter, announcing that their crackdown on the protesters worked and “the number of protesters at the grounds has reduced significantly.”
New Zealand has been widely praised for how it handled the pandemic compared to most countries that dealt with thousands of deaths and exhausted health care systems.
About 94% of New Zealand's population is fully vaccinated, and the country kept numbers down last year by closing its borders and imposing strict lockdown rules.
New Zealand had a record low number of cases and only recorded 53 deaths from a population of 5 million people.