Slovakia

[Robert Bandanza]

Nationalist demo

A large neo-Nazi gathering and a counter-protest was held this past Saturday in the town where the famed yeshiva of the "Chatam Sofer" once stood.

Several hundred neo-Nazi supporters gathered at a main square in Bratislava to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of Slovakia’s Nazi-led puppet government. In reaction to the neo-Nazi rally, Slovakia, dozens of young people counter protested, the Slovak Spectator reported.

Most of the protestors were youths sporting shaved heads, and dressed in the black uniforms of fascist regimes. The members of the Czech National Resistance and a group of older protestors listened to speeches and shouted nationalistic slogans.

Ivan Sykora, the leader of the ultra-right Slovenska Pospolitost (SP), a group that was disbanded by Slovakia’s Interior Ministry in November, was the first to address the crowd. He praised Nazi-led Slovakia, saying that it was founded democratically.

The former leader of the SP, Marian Kotleba, greeted the crowd with the ‘Heil, Hitler’ salute, before being taken away by police, who arrested and detained him.

SP’s Sykora clarified that Kotleba was not taken away for his salute, but for his criticism of the government. However, Police Vice President Stanislav Jankovic told the TA3 television news network that the police decided to end the rally after demonstrators used the Nazi salute.

Riot police used force to disperse the crowds, and arrested six of the protestors. After the crowds cleared, remaining participants marched under police escort towards the symbolic grave of Jozef Tiso, the president of wartime Slovakia, who was an ally of Hitler.

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