For more news visit ☛ http://english.ntdtv.com<br />Follow us on Twitter ☛ http://twitter.com/NTDTelevision<br />Add us on Facebook ☛ http://me.lt/9P8MUn<br /><br />An anti-nationalist street demonstration managed to interrupt Polish Independence Day commemorations, leaving more than 50 wounded and 200 arrested last Friday. NTD's Sonja Ozimek has more.<br /><br />Violent riots disrupt Polish Independence Day commemorations in Warsaw as militant protesters clash with police. <br /><br />First, about a hundred so-called black bloc anarchists attack police, then barricade themselves in a cafe.<br /><br />Later in the day, volleys of rocks, flares and home-made explosives fly at police as they try to block a right-wing Independence Day march, set on a collision course with a left-wing demonstration.<br /><br />[Krystyna Bednarska, "March of Independence" Participant]:<br />"There are two sides facing off. Here - people with patriotic, nationalistic, and Catholic leanings, and there - the extreme left."<br /><br />The demonstration, called Colorful Independence, started out as an anti-nationalist street party taking up one half of a major Warsaw boulevard.<br /><br />[Kazimiera Szczuka, "Colorful Independence" Co-organizer]:<br />"Poland is a country that for generations wasn't independent and Poles were vagrants, emigrants throughout the world. Today we have a country of our own. And we want to be hospitable. We don't want Poland to be a place where anyone feels unwanted because of their race, color of skin or religion. This is a new, free Poland."<br /><br />Some time later, Colorful Independence demonstrators rushed a police line and staged an illegal sit-in, blocking the entire road -- and with it, the nationalist March of Independence.<br /><br />[Piotr Nowak, Anti-Nationalist Demonstrator]:<br />"In Poland and in all of Europe there's a tendency for the far right to exploit different anniversaries or holidays to promote extremist, neo-nazi and homophobic views -- views which must be given no place in today's society."
