STOCKHOLM: Around 300 neo-Nazi activists demonstrated in central Stockholm on Saturday, drawing boos from protesters and politicians seeking to ban their movement.

Under the close watch of a detachment of police in riot gear, activists from the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) gathered in a square in the Swedish capital.

At the edges of the square, hundreds of counter-demonstrators gathered behind a security cordon, shouting slogans and banging the metal barriers in a bid to drown out the NRM speeches.

Among the protesters was Culture Minister Alice Bah Kuhnke, who was born to a Gambian father and a Swedish mother.

Both the rally and the counter-protests ended peacefully without incident.

Sweden, which boasts a long tradition of welcoming refugees and persecuted groups, is experiencing a creeping rise in neo-Nazi activities in public and on social media.

NRM, which was founded in 1997, is a political party which openly promotes a racist and anti-Semitic doctrine and has been described as the country’s most violent Nazi organisation by Swedish anti-racism magazine Expo.

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2018