Participants at the start of the traditional Rhine-Ruhr Easter March in Duisburg. The peace march ends on Easter Monday in Dortmund. Credit: Roberto Pfeil/dpa
Germans gathered at around 70 locations across the country on Saturday for the traditional Easter marches calling for peace.
Marches were held in the major centres of Berlin, Munich, Cologne and Leipzig.
The three-day march through the Ruhr Region began in Duisburg, from where it will proceed via Essen, Wattenscheid and Bochum, ending in Dortmund on Monday.
The first rallies were held on Thursday and Friday, with a total of around 100 marches planned over the long Easter weekend. Saturday is traditionally the main day.
The marches are organized regionally by trade unions and leftist and Christian groups. They have declined in scope since the heyday of the peace movement in the early 1980s when hundreds of thousands participated.
This year, the focus is on Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East.
Police said 3,000 people participated in the Stuttgart peace march, with up to 1,000 joining rallies in Berlin and hundreds more in Cologne.
The peace movement supports diplomatic initiatives to end wars, a strengthening of international law and efforts for the victims of war. It calls on the German government to halt rearmament and for a rejection of military conscription.
“In almost 40 years of Easter march work, I have never seen so many crises in the world at Easter,” Kristian Golla of the Bonn-based Peace Cooperative Network said. “It really makes me think, but it also shows how important working for peace is,” she added.
