International Relations and Criticism
The party is a member of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR), allying with, amongst others, the British Conservative Party, Polish Law and Justice, and the Czech Civic Democratic Party. They sit with the AECR's group, the European Conservatives and Reformists, in the European Parliament. Until 2009, TB/LNNK was a member of the Alliance for Europe of the Nations and sat with the UEN group.
In 2009, British foreign secretary David Miliband has criticized Conservative Chairman Eric Pickles' decision to secure an alliance with TB/LNNK in the ECR group "despite the fact that its members attend commemorations for the Waffen-SS". In a response, William Hague demanded apology to TB/LNNK and Latvian government from Miliband, describing his remarks as recycling "false Soviet propaganda" and noting that "the majority of parties forming Latvia’s current Government including the Prime Minister’s party, have attended the commemoration of Latvians who fought in the Second World War".
The Israeli historian and Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Israeli office in Jerusalem, criticized the party's "obsession to pay public homage to the Latvian-SS Legion in contradiction to all historical logic and sensitivity to Nazi crimes" in a column for The Guardian on 28 September 2009, while Vilnius University professor Dovid Katz, writing that the British Conservatives must not be let "get off the hook for their dalliances with some of the worst racists and Holocaust perverters in eastern Europe," called for Pickles' resignation as chairman in October 2009.
Read more about this topic: For Fatherland And Freedom/LNNK
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