The Workers’ Party of Ireland condemns the recent banning by the regime in Kiev of the Communist Party of Ukraine, the culmination of a systematic attack on the Communist Party, its rights, its facilities, and its members. The Communist Party of Ukraine won more than two and a half million votes at the 2012 election, 13% of the vote. It is no accident that the same day that the Communist Party was banned by a regime containing open Nazis, and established at the behest of the EU and the United States, a member of the Communist Party of Ukraine was tortured and murdered by the fascist forces that dominate the recently-established National Guard. We see how little the principles of democracy mean to the Kiev government and its international backers.
It has been often remarked that, following the ousting of the elected president, the new regime was the first government in Europe to include open fascists since the end of the fascist regime in Spain. This came as no surprise to the Communist and Workers’ Parties, nor to all those actively opposed to fascism. Driven by reactionary governments in former socialist countries, such as those who awarded pensions to members of the SS responsible for the most barbaric crimes imaginable during World War II, the EU has adopted anti-communism as its official ideology. It has drawn a false equivalence between the forces of fascism and those most responsible for liberating peoples from it, the Communists. In several states, laws have been implemented to criminalise Communism and its symbols without any complaints from the EU about this violation of democracy. It comes as no surprise to us, then, to see once more capitalist governments ally themselves with fascist forces against Communism. As the Communist Party of Ukraine itself has noted, the emergence of fascist regimes has always begun with the banning of Communism.
The imperialist powers of NATO, supported by the EU, have been aggressively expanding their influence in central and eastern Europe since the overturning of the socialist governments there 25 years ago. This policy, which aims to seize control of resources and markets and to keep Russia in a weakened state, is a dangerous one that has everything to do with power politics and economic gain, and nothing to do with democracy. We see its fruits in Ukraine: fascists back in government, violence, and the banning of Communism, which offers the alternative of peace, solidarity and social justice.
The Workers’ Party expresses its solidarity with the Communist Party of Ukraine and all progressive forces there, demands the lifting of the ban on the Communist Party of Ukraine and calls for the rejection and isolation of the Kiev regime.