Nationalist Concert in Belgrade Cancelled After Anti-Nazis Protest

Club 451 in Belgrade announced on Tuesday evening that it has cancelled a concert by Swiss nationalist singer Ewiger Sturm that was planned for March 12.

The Youth Initiative for Human Rights, a Belgrade-based NGO, welcomed the decision, adding that it had urged the Serbian Interior Ministry to ban the concert "in order not to allow the anti-fascist tradition to be trampled on again".

Earlier this week, the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia, SKOJ, also urged the authorities to ban the concert because of what it said was the extreme right-wing content of some of Ewiger Sturm's songs.

The SKOJ cited "a ballad dedicated to Ian Stuart Donaldson, the late founder of the international neo-Nazi skinhead network Blood and Honour (which also has an active branch in Serbia)".

It said that holding a concert by such a singer in Belgrade, "which experienced Nazi-fascist occupation in the Second World War", would be "unacceptable and offensive".

"Therefore our youth association calls on the authorities to prevent the holding of that hideous gathering and ban the singer Ewiger Sturm from entering Serbia," it added.

The Serbian Interior Ministry did not respond to BIRN's request for a comment.

A similar concert dedicated to Blood and Honour founder Donaldson, who was also the lead singer with 'white power' band Skrewdriver, was announced for October 2020 in Belgrade at a different venue, but was cancelled after strong criticism from the public, some political parties and civic associations.

In Serbia, it is prohibited to hold neo-Nazi or fascist events or display neo-Nazi or fascist symbols. Breaches of the law are treated as civil offences.