Ukraine Wants Human Rights Body to Study ‘violent Upsurge’ of Neo-nazism

The chairman of the U.N. Human Rights Commission said here yesterday that he wants that body to take up the problem of resurgent Nazism in certain countries and to recommend action to the General Assembly.

P.E. Nedbaile, of the Ukraine, mentioned no specific country when he declared that “measures should be taken to halt Nazi activities wherever they occur”. But he was clearly referring to West Germany when he asserted that in “one country, under official protection, local and general meetings of such groups have sharply increased.” He added that “this intensification has taken place with the encouragement and under the protection of the official authorities of that country.”

West German leaders have voiced increasing concern over the growing political power of the National Democratic Party, an extreme right-wing nationalist group espousing Hitlerian tenets, which has gained seats in six of the ten Laender (state) parliaments and stands a good chance of winning seats in the Bundestag (lower house) in the next elections. But the Bonn Government is loathe to initiate legal steps to ban the NPD for fear that these may backfire.

Mr. Nedbaile warned that “the violent upsurge of neo-Nazism, recalling the period of the rise of Hitlerism, is a real danger to the cause of peace throughout the world, and this process is even now accompanied by a broad attack on the basic constitutional rights and human freedoms. In these circumstances, new effective measures must be taken to ensure the implementation of provisions of international law calling for the eradication of Nazism and militarism and categorically forbidding all Nazi or militarist activity or propaganda.”