Far-right demonstrators clash with Swedish police, 20 arrested
Swedish police have clashed with protesting members of a far-right movement, arresting about 20 demonstrators in the second-largest city of Gothenburg.
Police in Gothenburg, some 400 kilometers southwest of the capital Stockholm, said on Saturday that those arrested, mostly foreigners, included one person accused of kicking an officer in the face and two others of carrying knives.
Authorities say the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM), a neo-Nazi movement active in Sweden, Finland, and Norway, expected some 1,000 people to march on Saturday while as many as 10,000 people could counterdemonstrate. The NRM is to protest Sweden’s acceptance of refugees in a rally dubbed the “revolt against the traitors.”
Reports said that arrests were made after clashes broke out between the two opposing groups and police. At least one police officer was slightly injured in the process. The counterdemonstration, including members of the Motmakt and Antifascistic Action organizations, aims to gather 10,000 people.
The NRM gathered hundreds of people for the march. Membership in Nazi organizations is not illegal in Sweden and the NRM had a police permit to march. However, the Swedish security police (Säpo) consider the NRM to be the most dangerous neo-Nazi group in Sweden. Some members of the far-right group are said to have received weapons training through military service for the Swedish military.
The movement, which promotes an openly anti-Semitic doctrine, originally sought to pass near a synagogue during the march, which coincides with the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur. Swedish courts intervened and shortened the route to less than one kilometer.
Police anticipated violence and had called in reinforcements from all police districts in Sweden and added 350 temporary jail beds in a police garage.
Gothenburg was scarred by violent demonstrations in 2001 on the sidelines of a European Union summit.
(Compiled from multiple sources, including AP and Reuters)
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