No honor for the Latvian Waffen-SS! Call for international protests

25. Februar 2017

On 16 March, as every year since 1991, in Riga, the Latvian capital, there will be a worship, an honorary march and a flag-lined rally at the Freedom Monument in honor of the Latvian units of the Waffen-SS.

With Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Bulgaria, Latvia is one of the Eastern European states where units of the Waffen-SS and other anti-Semitic death squads collaborating with the Nazis are celebrated as national idols. This is done with state toleration and partial open support from authorities.

The Riga « Ehrenmarsch » is an unprecedented provocation for the members of the victims of the Latvian police and SS units and for the Jewish, Russian-speaking and other minorities in the country. It stands not only in contrast to the fundamental values of the European Union, whose other advantages the Latvian state likes to accept, but is also a provocation against the Russian Federation and thus a threat to peace in Europe.

In Latvia, anti-fascist demonstrators are exposed to considerable reprisals (telephone monitoring, travel restrictions, administrative chicanery, police, state influence on hotels and event organizers). This also applies to supporters who come from Germany and other countries.

It is therefore more important in 2017 as well to show solidarity with the Latvian antifascists. The International Federation of Resistance Fighters (FIR) and its member federations call for a trip to Riga and to participate in the anti-fascist demonstration on 16 March.

At the same time they call on March 15, 2017, in Rome, Brussels, Budapest, Athens as well as in several German towns to protest in front of Latvian embassies and consulates in Europe against the glorification of Nazi collaborators and mass murderers and to demand freedom for Latvia’s anti-fascists.

We demand:

• Conclude the tribute of Nazi collaborators and murderers!

• Recognize the Baltic participation in Nazi genocide!

• Freedom for « Latvia without Nazism »!

• We call all antifascists to send protest messages to Latvian embassies and Latvian consulates!