Finnish antifascists have temporarily been denied visas to enter Estonia where they planned to take part in rallies protesting Saturday's gathering of Estonian Waffen SS veterans.
Johann Beckman who heads the Finnish Antifascist Committee and is a leading member of the World Without Nazism international organization slammed the black list of antifascists that has just appeared on the Estonian Foreign Ministry website, as proof of official Estonian support for pro-Nazi gatherings... Indeed, Estonia is the only place around where neo-Nazis are free to hold official rallies and spread their ideas.

Estonian SS veterans have regularly been meeting for more than 15 years now, but the activity of antifascist groups has equally been on the rise, says Maxim Reva with the Nightwatch anti-Nazi organization active in this former Soviet Baltic republic.

Such rallies by SS veterans have been held here since 1994 and they now even have a Society of Friends of the Estonian SS Legion, which helps organize such gatherings.

Last year members of our Nightwatch group gathered for an officially authorized picket but were quickly arrested and taken to a nearby police station. Nightwatch and other antifascist organizations are doing a good job setting up the World Without Nazism movement and preparing for this year's Nazi gathering. We tried to register a picket exactly where they arrested us last year only to be told that the place had already been set aside for the SS men's rally, Maxim says.

The antifascists tried to persuade the authorities to cancel the Nazi rally warning about a number of provocations being prepared by its participants, namely the propaganda of Nazi ideas and stoking up ethnic divisions.

The Estonian antifascists are getting a lot of support from their foreign colleagues, with the head of the Israeli branch of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Efraim Zuroff saying it's a shame for the entire European Union that SS veterans from around the world regularly come together in Estonia, which happens to be an EU member country.

The World Without Nazism movement finally got an official permission to stage a protest against the SS men's gathering slated for later today.

english.ruvr.ru