For two years the Lithuanian government had banned the public display of Soviet and Nazi symbols, but suddenly lifted the ban on Swastikas last May. This Friday a large Neo Nazi demonstration marched through the streets of an EU capital with Government permission and police escorts.
Hundreds marched through the streets of Vilnius with swastikas and SS insignia. Many people wore badges with swastikas sewed onto their clothing. Some were wearing white armbands with flames (that essentially resemble a swastika, a symbol that was also on some of the flags).
But this was no normal fringe Neo Nazi movement. Among the participants were Ricardas Cekutis, current head of PR at the state-sponsored Genocide Research Center – a government subsidised institution which tries to make an equivalence between the horrors of Stalinism and the horrors of the holocaust, seen here (on the right) with Mindaugas Murza, the infamous neo-Nazi. More astonishing still, MP Kazimieras Uoka, a member of parliament from the ruling Homeland Union faction was at the front of the March.
Something is going very wrong in Lithuania.