Morning Star (UK), Oct 16, 2015
The Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) has vowed to fight on against its banning by the government after its latest court appeal was dismissed.
The KPU took the Ministry of Justice to court over a July decree that formed the basis for the anti-democratic ban of the party. Last week, the Kiev district administrative court moved to consider the case without hearing testimony consulting the parties involved.
On October 13, the KPU’s legal team filed appeals with the court against that decision and to allow the party to call a witness in the case, only to have them rejected the same day.
The KPU said it would complain to the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine and law enforcement agencies over what it called the falsification of the judgement.
“It is clear that the judge committed gross procedural violations, violated basic principles of justice, including equality of all participants before the law, openness and transparency of the administrative process,” said the party in a statement.
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Petro Symonenko, head of Ukraine’s banned Communist party, speaks in Portugal
Fort Russ, Oct 11, 2015 (full text). This article was first published in Portuguese on September 17, here.
Conversation with Petro Symonenko, first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, guest of the Festa di Avante! Festival in Portugal, September 2015
In setting the goal of getting Ukraine into NATO (a decision that the Portugese Communist Party rejects and which would just worsen matters in both Ukraine and Europe), the present rulers are just looking to ensure their stay in power, accused the first Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine.
Petro Symonenko said that, with the coup of February 2014, the power in Kiev was taken over by “oligarchs and representatives of political forces who defend neo-fascist ideas.” Even President Poroshenko is an oligarch. His personal wealth has increased by seven times after one year in office. But these oligarchs “depend on the orders they get from abroad.” On the other hand, “Yushchenko’s whole squadron from 2004-2005” which “has always been under strict control of the Americans is back in power.”
Symonenko noted that the United States has openly admitted spending five billion dollars for “democracy” and so they have created their “fifth column.” “Today we find a Ukraine governed from the outside, and it is significant that citizens of other countries have been appointed in ministerial posts.”
The dictatorship has persecuted the communists, the democrats, in sum, all those who disagree. Differing views are not allowed, and there does not exist dialogue with the other political forces. They attack and kill journalists and parliamentary candidates.
Symonenko said he was himself subjected by the security services to interrogations lasting eleven and a half hours, and that he was subjected to four criminal trials, all for no reason. There are 400 court cases underway against other leaders of the PCU. But for the first secretary all this repression “is not the main thing:”
In 18 months Ukraine has lost 20 percent of its industrial capacity. “Factories and enterprises in the war zone have been destroyed, a lot of our heavy industry has been liquidated” and now “our military-industrial complex is about to be dismantled.” The country today “has nothing to do with the Ukraine that we knew when we launched the spacecraft.” Higher education, is getting deformed, “so it does not prepare specialists for production, but to earn money to the owners.” We had “a diversity of crops and livestock”, now there is the monoculture, “milk is imported from Poland, meat from Brazil or Australia” and “agriculture in Ukraine has stopped being a source of raw material for the processing industry ”
Petro Symonenko also noted that “The IMF loans have created a debt that today equals the entire gross domestic product.” The country “cannot pay” and “debt restructuring has meant the recognition that Ukraine is in the situation of default.” The war is taking up 30 percent of the budget, and as a result, the loans of the European Union are going to finance the war, which is destroying the economy of Ukraine, and generating millions of unemployed.
“If Russia, where they already have taken in a million Ukrainian refugees, decided to close the border, all these unemployed people would pour into the European Union, whose refugee problem is already serious,” warns the chief executive of the PCU, noting that EU governments had stated that the support granted to Ukraine was to defend democracy, but that “the result is only blood and war.”
The PCU is concerned to ensure the defense and security of the Communists. It works for a change in the conscience of citizens. It develops cooperation with friends in Europe, with the communist parties and the group in the European Parliament. Petro Symonenko was in France, Germany, and the Czech Republic, and highlighted the positive results of these contacts.
“I gratefully accepted the invitation of the comrades of the Portuguese Communist Party to participate in this fantastic festival,” because this Party “was the first to respond to the call of the PCU to join our efforts in the fight against fascism, which was on the rise, and against the establishment of a fascist dictatorship in our country. ” “In the midst of this hysteria and this anti-communist frenzy, the Ukrainian power has unleashed a political trial against the PCU and against our ideology, against real people.” “At that time, comrades of the PCP were in Ukraine, and have followed the process, and Europe has become aware of the position of the Portuguese Communists who supported us” and “that has been, without doubt, a great influence in the unmasking of this process that aimed at outlawing the PCU,” said Symonenko.
The first secretary of the PCU has also underlined “this unique opportunity to talk about the reality of Ukraine to our friends and to all participants in the festival.” Symonenko believes that “this is very important, in order to agree on the positions we take, to see how together we can influence governments and parliaments of each country, in the interests of peace in Europe and against fascism, which has raised its head in our continent and already occupies the power in Ukraine, as well as against the worsening of conflicts and the proliferation of hotbeds of tension.”
