The Russian government-supported youth movement, Nashi, plans to hold demonstrations in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, on March 23, 2009 against a seminar organized by the Estonian Embassy in Helsinki. Johan Bäckman, leader of the self-declared “Finnish Anti-Fascist Committee” (Safka), said Estonia’s pro-Moscow Nightwatch (Nochnoy Dozor) organisation will also take part in the demonstrations. The organisers of the planned demonstration repeat Kremlin’s assertion that the seminar, Fear Behind the Wall, is “anti-Russian” and “pro-Nazi.”
The Estonian Embassy will organise the seminar in cooperation with the Latvian and Lithuanian embassies, Finnish book publisher WSOY, and Finland’s National Audiovisual Archive (KAVA). The seminar will mark 60 years since the March deportations in Estonia and 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. Political scientist Iivi Anna Masso will interview authors Imbi Paju and Sofi Oksanen, editors of the article compilation,“Fear Behind Us All.”
Speaking on Russia’s state-run First Channel, Johan Bäckman claimed that “anti-Russian forces” have spread their activities from the Baltic States to Finland. He claimed prized Finnish author Sofi Oksanen and Estonian-born political scientist Iivi Anna Masso were spreading “fascist, pro-Nazi propaganda” in Finland. Bäckman characterised the series of documentary films, “Fear Behind the Wall,” to be screened at the Finnish National Audiovisual Archive’s Orion cinema, as a series of “anti-Russian films”.
Bäckman has made numerous provocative statements against Estonia and in support of Kremlin policies. He has published books that are uncritically supportive of Russia’s official party line and denigrating Finnish critics of the regime in Moscow.
Read more on the FINROSFORUM blog here.