EDL plans for Luton protest raise fears of disorder (UK)

Police expected to mount biggest operation in town's history as councillor says vast majority reject extremism of any kind


The far-right English Defence League is due to stage the biggest demonstration in its 18-month history this weekend amid growing fears of widespread disorder.

Thousands of EDL activists from across England will descend on Luton, the Bedfordshire town where the organisation started, for the protest on Saturday.

The EDL has staged more than 30 protests in towns and cities across the UK since it was formed in March 2009, many of which have been marred by Islamophobia, racism and violence.

On Saturday, between 25 and 30 coaches packed with EDL supporters are expected to travel to Luton, including a number of activists from far-right groups in France, the Netherlands and Germany.

"This event is creating more fear than anything else, especially among the elderly who have seen the pictures of what has happened at these events in the past," said Luton councillor Mahmood Hussain.

"Everyone is very much concerned about what could happen because you only have to look at the record of this group to see what we face."

Bedfordshire police are planning the biggest operation in Luton's history with around 2,000 police expected to be on duty, with several hundred more on standby.

Community leaders and politicians have been working with different community groups in the town since the EDL announced it was going to stage the protest under the catchline "Back to where it all began".

"We had a very emotional meeting last week where the young people were very concerned with some of the awful things that were written on the internet by EDL people," said Hussain. "But we are trying to tell them not to be provoked because that is just what these people want."

The EDL was formed in Luton after a small number of protesters from an extremist Muslim group held up placards at the homecoming of the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment reading "Butchers of Basra" and "Anglian soldiers go to hell."

At a subsequent protest in the town scores of EDL supporters attacked Asian businesses, smashing cars and threatening passersby. The group has branches across the country and its leadership insists it is not violent or racist and is opposed only to what it describes as radical or militant Islam. However, many of its demonstrations have descended into violence and racist chanting. Some supporters are known far-right activists and football hooligans.

Nick Lowles from anti-racist group HOPE not hate said: "The EDL poses the biggest threat to community cohesion in Britain today. Its activities are designed to increase tensions in communities with a large Muslim population and especially in areas that have had problems in the past. By demonstrating in these areas they embolden local racists and seek a violent reaction from local Muslim youths, which in turn will lead to a new cycle of violence."

Luton has had links to Muslim extremism in the past. In December, it emerged that Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, an Iraqi-born Swede who set off a car bomb in the Swedish capital before killing himself with a second bomb, had spent time in Luton.

However, Lowles said the vast majority of people in Luton rejected extremism of any kind.

"The danger is that people will get the impression that there is only extremism in this town which is simply not true. What we want to do is mobilise mainstream opinion and give them a voice to oppose the EDL and any other extremists."

Hussain agreed that the vast majority of people in Luton were opposed to the EDL's message of hate and division.

"I have been here since 1969 and we have never had any race riots or anything like that," said Hussain. "This is a truly diverse place and we won't turn our back and let the EDL destroy all that is good about it."

The Guardian

Far right party expelled from HQ over unpaid debts (Romania)

Corneliu Vadim Tudor, president of extreme right wing Greater Romania Party (PRM) and 2000 presidentual run-off candidate has been evicted from his party’s headquarters on Strada Emile Zola in Sector 1 Bucharest. Ex-Communist propagandist poet Vadim and party members resisted the eviction, where the party head threw water in the face of the bailiff and complained of sickness due to the stress of the process. Prosecutors have launched criminal proceedings against Vadim Tudor for assaulting policemen and breaching a court order. The State Administration of Patrimony (RAAPPS) gave the building to the PRM in 2007, but the party accumulated debts from rent, utilities and penalities worth almost 66,000 Euro.

The Diplomat

Turks to stage protest against racist attacks in France

A rally to be held in Strasbourg on Wednesday will protest growing racist attacks against immigrants, including ethnic Turks living in France.

A rally to be held in Strasbourg on Wednesday will protest growing racist attacks against immigrants, including ethnic Turks living in France.

The French human rights associations and the Association of Solidarity with Turkish Workers (ASTTU) are among groups that are organizing the event. ASTTU representative Muharrem Koç said the French government's recent immigration policies had encouraged assailants, the Anatolia news agency reported on Monday.

Koç said there were more than 30 racist attacks against ethnic Turks and foreigners in Strasbourg and its vicinity in the past two years and that none of the perpetrators of these crimes had been captured yet.

Arsonists in Hoenheim, a suburb of Strasbourg, attacked two houses inhabited by families of Turkish origin on Thursday night but there were no casualties and the fire in the neighboring houses was put out by firefighters and did not spread. Swastikas were drawn on walls and on a van parked in a yard.

Noting that the immigrant community is concerned, Koç said it is time for the French government to seriously start thinking about the causes of these attacks and take necessary measures.

Meanwhile, the Strasbourg-based Turkish association COJEP has requested an appointment to meet with authorities from Strasbourg to express their concern over the latest incidents.

Last month, the Student Congress Association's Strasbourg office was the target of a racist attack. Furthermore, two cars owned by Faruk Günaltay, the Turkish director of the Odyssey Cinema Club in Strasbourg, were destroyed in racially motivated arson attacks in September of last year. Attackers also drew swastikas on the door of Günaltay's house.

Muslim and Jewish prayer venues and cemeteries have previously been frequently attacked by racists in Strasbourg and regions surrounding it.

World Bulletin

Genocide witnesses may be added to Holocaust survivors database (Czech Rep)

The centre of Holocaust history Malach could be extended in future with testimonies on the genocides in Armenia, Cambodia and Rwanda, Martin Smok told journalists at a conference on the first anniversary of the centre Friday.

Smok cooperates with the Shoah Foundation of University of Southern California that has recorded the 52,000 interviews with survivors of concentration camps, particularly Jews, Romanies, German homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and others, since the 1990s.

The database is now accessible at the Mathematical-Physical Faculty of Charles University in Prague.

Smok said the survivors talk about their experience from extermination camps as well as about their fates, emigration and the communist totalitarian regime.

The database is visited mainly by students who need the information for their school works and by historians.

"In Europe the survivors are afraid," Smok said in reply to a question whether the database could be freely accessible on the Internet in the future.

Many of them fear that the data could be abused to persecute their descendants. Another obstacle are laws on personal data protection.

The recordings come from 56 countries of the world and they have been made in 32 languages.

The Malach centre offers for immediate access more than 500 interviews in Czech, further in Slovak and Polish.

The data are physically stored at the University of Southern California, USA.

Besides, they are accessible at another two centres in Europe, in Berlin and Budapest. The whole database is accessible at another 23 places in the world.

The Armenian genocide is blamed on Turks. The Armenians say the massacres and deportations in the years 1915-1917 cost 1.5 million lives. Turkey speaks about 300,000 to 500,000 people. However, it says it was not genocide, but that the Armenians fell victim to the chaos of the last years of the Osmanic Empire.

In Cambodia, the communist regime in the latter half of the 1970s murdered 1.7 million people during an attempt to create a class-free agrarian society not knowing money, the rule of law, personal freedom, family relations, independent thinking and technological achievements.

In Rwanda members of the Hutu majority tribe massacred some 800,000 minority Tutsis and dozens of thousands of members of their own ethnicity during a three-month ethnic conflict in 1994.

Prague Monitor

Student leader Aaron Porter barracked with anti-Semitic insults (UK)

The head of the National Union of Students had to be led to safety from a tuition fees rally he had been due to address after being surrounded by protesters chanting anti-semitic insults at him.

Aaron Porter was escorted by officers after being confronted as he made his way to offices in Manchester. Witnesses report that among the chants directed at him from a small number of demonstrators were "------- Tory Jew". Other protesters responded to the anti-semitic taunts aimed at Mr Porter by chanting: "No to racism, no to racism."

Following the confrontation, he pulled out of plans to address the rally on the advice of police, who have launched an investigation.

A small group of students had split off from the 3,000 strong march to barrack Mr Porter after spotting him close to the University of Manchester Students' Union building.

Mr Porter has faced growing opposition from more militant sections of the student protest movement, which have called on the NUS to take a more radical stance against Government education spending cuts and increases in tuition fees.

He said last night: "NUS sought to organise a protest with our union partners at which all individuals could take part without being subject to verbal and physical intimidation. It's very disappointing not to have had the opportunity to talk about the real issue of the Government's cuts to the next generation's future."

The general secretary of the UCU lecturers' union, Sally Hunt, addressing the rally in Manchester, accused the government of being at "war with young people".

"It is betraying an entire generation," she said. Fourteen people were arrested during the Manchester protests.

Thousands of students and trade unionists also staged a noisy protest march through Westminster, central London.

Protesters taking part used technology to avoid being held in a police "kettle" – where demonstrators are held in a confined area – with the launch of a mobile phone application designed to identify blocked routes. As a result a number of splinter groups fanned out across central London.

After a failed attempt to stage a repeat of last November's invasion of Tory HQ in Millbank, some of the students moved on the Egyptian Embassy, in Mayfair, to join those protesting against President Mubarak's regime.

"London, Cairo – unite and fight," they chanted on arrival.

At Topshop in the Strand students stopped to direct abuse at the store's owner Sir Philip Green, whose tax arrangements have attracted controversy. "Pay your tax, pay your tax," they chanted.

There were similar scenes outside the Vodafone store, in Oxford Street. The company has also targeted for its tax arrangements.

The store was guarded by a line of police, keeping protesters apart from the bemused shoppers trapped inside.

At Downing Street hundreds of protesters lit flares and chanted anti-Government slogans.

Scotland Yard said: "The protests in London were largely peaceful with only a small number of arrests and no violence or disorder."

The Telegraph

Relief as gathering of English Defence League passes peacefully (UK)

The chairman of Derby's Pakistani Community said he was relieved that an English Defence League march in the city on Saturday was trouble-free.

But he said their presence "angered" him and he believed they had targeted the city because of a recent court case which saw eight Asian men and one white man jailed for targeting young white girls for sex.

About 50 members of the EDL gathered in Derby Market Place on Saturday afternoon before marching up St Peter's Street and East Street and gathering in the White Horse pub, in the Morledge.

No arrests were made and police said the protest was "peaceful".

Mr Lal said: "I think the main reason the EDL targeted Derby was Operation Retriever. We know that they highlighted the case on their website and online forums.

"And, of course, a number of EDL members turned up at Nottingham Crown Court for the sentencing of the men."

Operation Retriever was a covert police investigation to catch men using drink and drugs to lure vulnerable teenage girls. Ringleaders Abid Mohammed Saddique, 27, of Northumberland Street, Normanton, and Mohammed Romaan Liaqat, 28, of Briar Lea Close, Sinfin, were jailed indefinitely.

Derbyshire police has never said the case was in any way racially motivated.

On Saturday, EDL members from Leicester and the West Midlands were among the 50 who protested in the city.

Divisional Commander Andy Hough, of Derbyshire police, said: "We knew there was going to be something low key. We know there are a number of EDL members in Derby and that some of them associate themselves with Derby County, who did not have a match.

"We expected a few of them to meet for a drink and informal discussion but we did not think as many would come to the city as did."

Mr Lal said: "Derby enjoys excellent community relationships and Pakistani and Muslim people are all proud to call themselves Derbeians.

"It angers me when an organisation like the EDL comes into Derby to try to stir up animosity."

An EDL member, who did not give his name, said: "We are always portrayed as thugs but we came here for a peaceful protest and there have been no arrests. We are not racists."

This is Derbyshire

Hitler's headquarters in Ukraine to be made tourist attraction

Ukrainian officials have unveiled a plan to turn the remains of Hitler' Eastern Front military headquarters into a tourist attraction.

The museum will be established by May 9, the anniversary of the Victory Day over  Fascism.

The Wehrwolf headquarters, consisting of about 20 wooden cottages and barracks and three bunkers, are located some 12 km north of Vinnytsia in central Ukraine.

Construction started in September 1941 and was completed in April 1942. More than 10,000 Soviet war prisoners and some 1,000 local citizens participated in the works and some 2,000 of them died. Another 4,000 were shot dead.

The Nazis destroyed the site on abandoning the region. The underground parts of the complex were later sealed.

"It is time to make the Wehrwolf headquarters a tourist destination, a memorial to the victims of fascism," said Mykola Djiga, head of the local administration of Vinnytsia.

"This museum should remind us about the time that our people endured, their sacrifices and heroism. It should also show the face of the fascist enemy. We must show what enemy we had defeated," he said.

Times of India