Free Republic

KIEV, Ukraine — Thousands of aging Red Army veterans and their supporters clashed Saturday in downtown Kiev with partisans who fought the Soviets and Nazis during World War II and now want pensions and official recognition as veterans. Hundreds of nationalists from western Ukraine gathered in the capital to demand formal recognition for the partisans, a move that would also entitle them to social and financial benefits. "They died for Ukraine, and we must recognize it and honor them as heroes," said protester Vasil Kokoyda, 55. Thousands of Red Army veterans and their supporters, waving red flags and chanting "Get...

Russia condemns Nazi march in Latvia -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Big News Network.com Thursday 17th March, 2005 (UPI) Russia has condemned a Wednesday march in Riga, the Latvian capital, by SS Nazi war veterans, Interfax news agency reported. The procession was held by former members of the Latvian SS Legion -- a unit that fought with the Nazis during World War II -- and it was supported by other Latvian radical nationalist groups, Interfax said. The Russian side has repeatedly qualified such actions as immoral and unacceptable, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement quoted by Interfax. It is especially cynical that...

The Royal Dutch Medical Association has concluded, after a three-year investigation, that Dutch doctors ought to be able to kill patients who are not ill but who are judged to be "suffering through living." The decision contradicts the Dutch Supreme Court that ruled in 2002 that patients may only request euthanasia if they have a "classifiable physical or mental condition," and not if they are merely "tired of life." The law however, does not require a medical condition, but only that a patient must be "suffering hopelessly and unbearably." Pro-life activists have warned that such ambiguous language is an open...

Calming the Waters by Sasa Grubanovic 16 September 2004 Hungary's president visits Serbia in an attempt to ease tensions in the multiethnic province of Vojvodina. BELGRADE, Serbia—For months, relations between Serbia and Hungary have been worsening amid reports of violence against Hungarians in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina. In recent weeks, Hungary’s foreign minister has even talked of “atrocities,” and taken Hungary’s concerns to European Union institutions. Alarmed by what it called “an unnecessary internationalization” of the issue, Belgrade has vowed to prevent or prosecute further clashes between the Serbian and Hungarian populations in Vojvodina. After a visit this...

SUBOTICA, Serbia, Sept. 15 - When the Setets family set off this morning to take their 13-year-old daughter to school, they got a shock. As they left their small, two-room house on the outskirts of Subotica, in northern Serbia, they found a 15-inch kitchen knife imbedded in their front door. Alongside it, someone had sprayed the Serbian word for "death" in red. Further to the right was "Drop dead, Hungarians." Such ethnically motivated attacks by Serbs against people like the Setets (pronounced sheh-tets), members of this country's 300,000-strong Hungarian minority, have become rife, souring relations between Serbia and neighboring Hungary....

I'm not Jewish. Nobody in my family died in the Holocaust. For me, anti-Semitism has always been one of those phenomena that doesn't really register on my radar, like tribal genocide in Rwanda, a horrible thing that happens to someone else. But I live in a small town outside of Munich on a street that until May of 1945 was named Adolf-Hitler-Strasse. I work in Munich, a pleasant metropolitan city of a little over a million inhabitants whose Bavarian charm tends to obscure the fact that this city was the birthplace and capital of the Nazi movement. Every day when...