Several hundred veterans, relatives and supporters of a Nazi SS division formed from Latvians during the second World War held a controversial annual commemoration yesterday in defiance of a ban.
Riga city authorities had banned all marches for fear of a repeat of riots triggered in January by Latvia’s economic crisis, but a column of veterans and supporters filed through the city anyway, amid tight security.
Holding Latvian flags and singing patriotic songs, they laid flowers at the Freedom Monument, a statue symbolising the Baltic state’s independence.
Four people were detained from a group of about 12 mainly Russian-speaking protesters, who shouted “Hitler kaputt” as the veterans walked by. Police quickly moved in to confiscate a Red Soviet-era flag. Another eight people were detained on a street away from the main march area.
The March 16th event has caused tensions every year since the veterans began to mark it soon after Latvia regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Russia calls it a glorification of fascism.
Latvia says many of the 100,000 men who fought in the Latvian Legion were conscripted by force and were not fighting for fascism. Many of those who volunteered saw it as the only way to take up arms against Russia’s annexation of their nation before the war.