International movement for the future without fascism

In Riga on March 16 passed, now traditional, the procession in honor of the memory of the Latvian legionaries «Waffen SS». The day before, on March 15 in Riga was organized a round table, where was discussed a problem of the glorification of the Nazi past and, as a consequence of it, the spread of Nazi ideology in some European countries.

The organizers of the round table were faced with unprecedented pressure from the security services of Latvia. All attempts to rent a conference hall in Riga hotels have been unsuccessful. Despite the fact that most hotels in Riga have free conference halls, a succession of failures occurred, even in those cases when payment was carried out beforehand. Despite all these difficulties, the event took place and was held in the office of the deputy of the European Parliament from Latvia Tatyana Zhdanoka.

The round table brought together a number of prominent politicians, political scientists and journalists from Latvia, Estonia, Austria and

Italy

. For several invited guests from Estonia on the border were handed orders prohibiting entry to Latvia.

Many participants of the round table noted that the problem of the glorification of Nazism is being especially openly presented in Latvia, where after the collapse of the Soviet Union was implemented and promoted the idea of a mono-ethnic society where the titular nation allot more rights than any other peoples living in this territory. As a reminder, in Latvia there is still a status of "non-citizenship", which hold now nearly 300 thousand local residents. Such a strange analogy to modern civilized European society can also be found in the classic work of Adolf Hitler`s "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle"), which proposes to deprive foreigners of their civil rights, including social and economic, as well as restrict them to use and study their native language. And, despite the fact that the situation in Latvia changes somehow, under pressure from the European community, there are still certain signs and features that are obviously contrary to the democratic principles on which live and develop other countries - members of the European Union.

The urgency of the problem of neo-Nazism in Latvia, according to many speakers, is connected with the revisionist policies of the local ruling elites, in which both the media and through public education programs offer a new interpretation of the events of the Second World War, which is contrary to the conclusions that were adopted by the international community as part of the Nuremberg trials. As a refresher of the horrors of the Nazi past of Latvia there was a small photo exhibition of victims of the Latvian Legion, which was presented at the event.

Another event, which was associated with the activities of the anti-fascist movement in Latvia, was the action that it activists held after the procession of legionaries on March 16, named the "Disinfection". Participants of the rally dressed in white robes and armed with mops and buckets, started to clean the area in front of the Freedom Monument, which was full of flowers on the eve of the legionnaires. As part of this action, according to organizers, they tried to "clean up the world - or at least

Latvia

- from the brown plague of Nazism."