BRUSSELS, September 03. /ITAR-TASS/. Rallies in support of Ukraine’s cities of Donetsk and Lugansk in front of the European Parliament building in Brussels will be continued until the Right Sector is listed as a terrorist organization, Tatjana Zdanoka, a Latvian member of the European Parliament, told ITAR-TASS on Tuesday.
A “Stop Fascism” picket was held in front of the European Parliament’s building on Tuesday. About 20 activists, both Russian and Ukrainian nationals and French and Belgian citizens, took part in the action. They were holding slogans “Stop Fascism,” “Save Donetsk” and a Russian flag. They demonstrated dozens of photos made on May 2 in the Ukrainian city of Odessa, where at least 48 protesters against the Kiev authorities had been burnt alive by radicals.
“We will stage such rallies on the second day of each month to commemorate the Odessa tragedy. We will be here until the Right Sector is listed as a terrorist organization,” she said. “Today, similar actions were held in Riga, Warsaw, Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Madrid, Milan. People learnt about these actions from anti-fascist organizations, from the European Russian Alliance.”
“There is a solid anti-fascist and anti-war movement in Europe involving tens of thousands of people. The main thing is that we know people who think the same way in all countries of the European Union. Despite the West’s massive pro-Kiev propaganda, there are a lot of people who do not believe it,” Elena Politova, an activist and administrator of the Facebook anti-war group, said.
Earlier on Tuesday, about a hundred people formed a human chain between the Russian and Ukrainian embassies in Riga in a Remembrance and Solidarity action dedicated to the May 2 massacre in the Ukrainian city of Odessa. The action was organized by activists of the party Latvian Russian Union. “We gathered here not only to pay tribute to those killed on May 2 in Odessa, but also to demand that the Ukrainian government do two things. First, it must conduct a really objective investigation and punish those responsible for this tragedy. Second, it must do away with radical right organizations that are now flocking round power in Ukraine,” Miroslav Mitrofanov, a co-chairman of the Latvian Russian Party, told ITAT-TASS. “It is inadmissible to flirt with fascists, they must be controlled and kept away from the state. Otherwise, Ukraine will never be a democratic country.”
What happened to Odessa
Unrest in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa started on May 2, when football fans from the east Ukrainian city of Kharkov marched along city streets with Right Sector radicals and supporters from Kiev's Maidan Self-Defence Force. Clashes broke out between them and activists seeking a referendum on the issue of Ukrainian federalisation and Russian's official status as a state language.
At least 48 people died and more than 200 were injured in clashes in Odessa after radicals set ablaze the regional House of Trade Unions, where pro-federalisation activists had taken refuge, and a tent camp near it where they had been collecting signatures in support of the referendum.
Some Ukrainian politicians said the clashes had taken the lives of at least 116 people and that Kiev's incumbent authorities sought to conceal exact figures.