Russian youth movements picket Latvian embassy in Moscow.

MOSCOW, March 17 (Itar-Tass) - Russian youth movements organized a
picket in front of the Latvian embassy in Moscow Tuesday night in protest
of a march of a pro-Nazi legion veterans in the Latvian capital Riga and
the calls by today's neo-Nazis to deport the ethnic Russian population
from Latvia.
About 300 participants of the picket wore the uniforms of Soviet
soldiers of the WW II era. They brought to the embassy the pictures of
people who died at the hands of soldiers of the Waffen SS legion during
the war.
"The attempt to heroize the Nazis and their accomplices looks like a
mockery at the World War II soldiers and officers who are still living
today now that the 65th anniversary since the end of the war is to be
marked," Tatiana Dmitriyeva, the leader of the movement Mestnye /Locals/
said.
She recalled that the real veterans of the war fought against the
cannibalic Nazi military machine, of which the Latvian Waffen SS
battalions were an integral part.
"We call attention to the inadmissibility of attempts to revise the
results of the Nuremberg tribunal," Dmitriyeva said. "We believe it's
impossible to justify the activity of Nazi collaborators during the war by
whatever pretexts."
After the action in front of the Latvian embassy, the activists of the
movement Nashi moved to the area where the European Union's mission is
located. They handed a letter to the mission's workers where they asked
the EU to pay attention to the manifestations of fascism in Latvia.
"Manifestations of fascism have grown more frequent in Latvia as the
65th anniversary of VE-Day approaches," said Nashi's commissar Marina
Zademidkova. "A march of the Waffen SS legion militants has been permitted
in downtown Riga, and the neo-Nazis overtly call at their Internet site
for deporting the ethnic Russians who will celebrate Victory Day on May 9."
"The Latvian police haven't taken any active steps against the editors
and commentators of this website that fans ethnic strife and instigates
extremism and unlawful actions," Zademidkova said.
She indicated that the letter, which Nashi handed to the EU mission
officials, urges the European community to react to the events in Latvia
and to enforce appropriate sanctions.
About a thousand former militants from the Waffen SS legion and their
young followers from among Latvian radicals marched to the Freedom
monument in downtown Riga Tuesday to venerate the memory of the
fellow-militants.
The police detained five people, including a man who waved a poster
saying 'Jews, This Is a Latvian State'.
At the monument, the pro-Nazi demonstrators were met by a group of
several dozen Russian-speaking anti-fascists and members of the Nochnoi
Dozor /Nighttime Vigil/ movement, who carried posters saying 'Shame!',
'Stop the Fascist March', "Fascists, Remember Nuremberg'.
Some of the posters recalled that more than a hundred thousand
innocent people died in various places of mass extermination at the hands
Waffen SS soldiers.
Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, came to
the monument in Riga together with the anti-Fascists. He told the media
later on it was somehow really strange to see people paying tribute to the
exterminators of Jewish people in the center of a European capital.
Also Tuesday, about 300 people, most of them former militants of the
SS legion, attended a service in the Dome Cathedral in Riga.
The Waffen SS legion consisting of two divisions was set up in Latvia
in 1943. Right after Latvia's declaration of independence in 1991, March
16 was an official remembrance date for a number of years.
A decision was taken late to drop it off the list of historic dates
after an SS march down Riga's streets produced a sharp reaction in Russia
and a number of West-European countries.
-0-kle