At dawn, before hundreds of nationalist extremists were to descend on their city, Miroslav Brož and about 40 other residents crept through the deserted streets of Ústí nad Labem.

Armed with rolls of yellow plastic tape, they decorated the streets, pinning up photographs of the backs of locals who shared their opposition to the extremist march planned for later the same evening.

"We turn our backs to the Nazis," Brož said, explaining the symbolism behind the photographs. "Ústí is our town, not theirs."

Brož and other concerned residents came up with the "We Don’t Want Nazis in Ústí!" initiative more than seven weeks ago, in response to plans by the extremist Autonomous Nationalist group for an April 18 march through the city.

The Autonomous Nationalists announced their demonstration as a peaceful event commemorating the victims of the 1945 U.S. bombing of Ústí nad Labem, but residents and local authorities worried the real aim was to mark Adolf Hitler’s 120th birthday, and to instigate unrest.

Those fears were exacerbated by recent violent extremist events such as an April 4 march in Přerov, where demonstrators, armed with cobblestones, clashed with police and vandalized property.

Several attempts by the Ústí City Hall to prevent the Autonomous Nationalists from publicly gathering were thwarted in March, when the Ústí Regional Court sanctioned a series of small demonstrations for April 18, reasoning they would not impede traffic.

In the days before the march, Milan Knotek, head of the mayor’s office, expressed dismay over the court’s decision, while City Hall issued leaflets advising residents to vacate Ústí for the weekend and to secure their storefronts against vandals. By the eve of the march, many businesses had boarded up their shop windows, bracing for the worst.

"We feel powerless that the laws of the state favor extremists," Knotek said.

With local authorities failing to prevent the march, members of the "We Don’t Want Nazis in Ústí!" initiative took matters into their own hands. Along the proposed march route, they put up anti-extremist billboards, with slogans like "Smile, not Heil!"

They set up a Web site and held a concert, attended by more than 500 people, earlier in the week to denounce racism. As a piece de resistance, they created a "street of shame" on the morning of the march, using the hundreds of photographs of their supporters’ backs.

"We want to show that there’s a big part [of the population here] who don’t agree with their ideas," said Vít, 32, a member of the initiative, who declined to give his full name over concerns for his safety.

Brož estimated only about a dozen extremists operate within Ústí nad Labem itself, but through tracking extremist Web sites and online forums, he noted that hundreds of others were arriving from other parts of the country and from Germany to participate in the march.

Although the Autonomous Nationalists urged against violence on their Web site, Brož was unconvinced of the group’s motives. He pointed to other Web sites linked to the group, including the U.S.-based Whitejustice.com, which includes a "Red Watch" compilation of photos and names of Czech citizens whom extremists have dubbed as targets for attack.

Reasoning with the local extremists doesn’t work, Brož said. "They don’t talk; they beat."

Around town, several residents unassociated with the initiative also expressed frustration with the local authorities’ failure to prevent the march.

But resident Jindřich Jireš, 50, said he was also skeptical of the "We Don’t Want Nazis in Ústí" initiative, as it created a media circus that was bringing more attention to the extremists than they deserved.

Brož, however, dismissed such criticism. "Ignoring Nazis doesn’t work. They tried that before World War II."

Fearing a backlash?

At 7 p.m., the slated time of the rally, about 200 demonstrators gathered under heavy police presence on Lidické náměstí, in front of City Hall. More than 1,400 police officers, including riot police, were stationed citywide, while a police helicopter monitored the scene from above.

Members of the Autonomous Nationalists declined repeated requests for interviews, and, during the rally, demonstrators, for the most part, held their distance from the press.

For more than half an hour, the demonstrators congregated without incident, but, as the march got under way, police said they prevented a clash with around 150 anarchists who had gathered to confront the extremists along the march route.

The most action police reported during the day were 15 arrests and the confiscation of dozens of weapons, said regional police spokeswoman Jarmila Hrubešová.

Anča, 21, a nurse from Jablonec nad Nisou, who traveled three and a half hours by train to participate in the march, said violence would "definitely" be on the agenda. "It’s about [foreigners] living here. They say they’re being discriminated against, when actually it’s us being discriminated against … in everything," she said, without elaborating.

Asked why she had traveled all the way to Ústí nad Labem, Anča answered, "I’m here to participate, as well as to look at good-looking guys."

Although the march concluded without incident, members of the "We don’t want Nazis in Ústí!" initiative were unable to rest easy in the days afterward.

Many of the members’ photographs, names and telephone numbers were found published on extremist Web sites.

"We are quite afraid," Brož said, adding he had left the city.

This story has been altered from the original print version. Several paragraphs and a photo have been removed from the web-edition as neo-Nazi groups have been circulating the text, and threats have accumulated against people featured in the story to the point that their safety was jeopardized.

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