Thousands of students in Hamburg protest reintroduction of compulsory military service

Moscow (ANTARA) - Around 6,000 school students skipped classes and joined a demonstration in Hamburg to oppose plans to reinstate compulsory military service in Germany, according to a report from the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) news agency on Friday. Protests against the militarisation of Germany also took place in other cities, including Berlin. Earlier, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported that young demonstrators in Berlin called on German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to go to the battlefield himself. The School Strike Against Conscription student group, which organised the demonstration, stated that the reintroduction of compulsory military service is part of war preparations and that students do not want to be part of military actions that only benefit German capitalist companies. The new compulsory military service regulations in Germany would allow the reinstatement of conscription, which has been suspended since 2011, if there are not enough volunteers or if the security situation deteriorates. Based on the draft, the German federal parliament, the Bundestag, proposes what is called “needs-based compulsory military service”, while increasing troop numbers to the required level could also be achieved through random selection via a lottery-like system.