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Vol. 80/No. 1 January 4, 2016
Ukraine ban on Communist Party blow to workers’ rights
BY SETH GALINSKY
A district court in Kiev ruled Dec. 16 that a government edict banning
the Communist Party of Ukraine is legal and should be enforced. The
court rejected the party’s challenge to a July 23 order by the Justice
Ministry prohibiting it from running candidates in elections. The new
ruling goes further, outlawing any activity by the party.
The CP backed the regime of Viktor Yanukovych, which was overthrown in
February 2014 by popular mobilizations seeking Ukraine’s independence
from Moscow’s boot. Since then the party has faced physical and legal
assaults on its members, offices, newspapers and its right to exist.
These attacks are a threat to the working class and labor movement in
Ukraine and the political rights of all working people there.
Facing pressure from Washington, the European Union and International
Monetary Fund, the capitalist government in Kiev consolidated under
billionaire Petro Poroshenko has conducted a relentless drive against
workers and farmers aimed at weakening the labor movement and ramping up
employers’ profitability. At the same time, Ukraine continues to face
aggression from Moscow and pro-Moscow forces occupying areas in the east
of the country and Crimea.
The July 23 Justice Ministry order, which also banned two parties that
split from the CP from participating in elections, was based on a set of
“decommunization” laws passed by the Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, in May.
The laws make it illegal to display communist or Nazi symbols, with
penalties of up to 10 years in prison; ban parties from using the word
communist in their names; and make it a crime to distribute communist
propaganda or to deny “the criminal character of the communist
totalitarian regime of 1917-1991 in Ukraine.”
The Justice Ministry charged that the CP “carries out actions aimed at
changing the constitutional order through violent means” and conducts
“propaganda of war, violence and incitement to inter-ethnic enmity” as
well as makes systematic “calls to create armed formations.”
“They’ve accused the Communist Party of so many things that I think it’s
a little like Shakespeare ‘thou dost protest too much,’” said Halya
Coynash, a member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, by phone
Dec. 19. She said the government has not made public any evidence of
violent acts by the party.
Working people in Ukraine played a key role in the overthrow of
Yanukovych. The Communist Party echoed Moscow’s slander that the Maidan
mobilizations were the work of “fascists” and agents of Washington.
The CP’s candidate for president received 39 percent of the vote in
1999. In the 2012 parliamentary elections, the party received 13 percent
of the vote. Petro Symonenko, the CP candidate for president, withdrew
from the 2014 presidential campaign after receiving threats of physical
violence and the interim government’s announcement it planned to file
criminal charges against him.
The party was widely discredited because of its opposition to the Maidan
movement and its political connections to separatist groups in the
eastern part of the country.
Poroshenko, who won the 2014 elections, has taken advantage of that
isolation to push for its destruction, encouraging rightist attacks. It
has also attempted to smear coal miners and others as “fifth columnists”
for fighting attacks on jobs, wages and social benefits.
The European Commission for Democracy Through Law, better know as the
Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, made up of representatives
of 47 European governments, issued an opinion Dec. 18 criticizing the
criminal penalties in the decommunization laws as “disproportionate” and
overly severe. At the same time, the commission said Kiev has the right
to “ban or even criminalise the use of certain symbols of and propaganda
for totalitarian regimes.”
“The banning of the Communist Party in Ukraine sets a very dangerous
precedent,” said Amnesty International spokesperson John Dalhuisen in a
Dec. 17 statement. “Expressing your opinion without fear of prosecution,
particularly if that opinion is contrary to the views held by those in
positions of power, was one of the principles behind the Euro Maidan
protests. Snuffing out the Communist Party flies in the face of these
ideals.”
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