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Antisemitic Rally in Kiev


(December 18, 2007)

A group of antisemites and racists held a torchlight procession through Kiev on December 8, according to a December 10, 2007 article in the Ukraine edition of the Russian national daily Kommersant.  In full view of a group of police officers, the demonstrators defied Ukraine's laws against hate speech by chanting slogans against "the Zionist occupation government" and "kikes" as well as anti-immigrant slogans and white power slogans such as "One race, one nation, one motherland."  The marchers were predominantly from the "Freedom" party, headed by the former member of parliament Oleg Tyagnybok, and the "Patriots of Ukraine" organization; both groups regularly hold racist and antisemitic demonstrations, though mostly not together.

"Death to our enemies!" screamed the crowd.  However, there have so far been no reports of violence on the fringes of the rally, in contrast to what happened this October 14 during a rally by UPA veterans in Kiev.  That day, according to UCSJ's Kiev monitor Vyacheslav Likhachyov, three Chinese female students were stabbed (three suspects were detained and charged with "hooliganism"), a citizen of Bangladesh was stabbed to death in what police called a robbery, and a group of unidentified youths smashed a window in the city's Brodsky synagogue.


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Copyright 2007 by UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union.