Extreme Right to Host Anti-Immigrant Conference: The miniscule but active extreme right groups in Portugal, which in the last few days have gained some notoriety in the press despite their small size, have invited like-minded organisations from other European countries to a "continent-wide" meeting of leaders opposed to immigration.
For the first time since Portugal returned to democracy 33 years ago, after a dictatorship that lasted from 1926 to 1974, the leaders of European organisations that are labelled racist, xenophobic and neo-Nazi will meet in this country, in "a secret place."
The initiative came from the National Renewal Party (PNR) of Portugal, which invited its counterparts from the rest of Europe to meet on Apr. 21 "in a spot that has not yet been decided, but will not be publicly divulged even after it has been chosen," according to its leader, José Pinto Coelho.
The date set for the meeting and the decision to hold it in Portugal have been interpreted as a provocation to the more than 300 delegates of the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH), who will hold their world congress in Lisbon from Apr. 19-21.
