Meeting to denounce the ban on the Communist Party of Ukraine organized by AKEL outside the Ukrainian Embassy

 

Cyprus News Agency 21st December 2015, Nicosia

AKEL held a protest meeting to denounce the decision of the Kiev Administrative Court to ban the functioning of the Communist Party of Ukraine on Monday outside the Embassy of Ukraine in Nicosia.

A resolution was approved at the meeting which nobody from the Ukrainian Embassy received. This was subsequently placed in the Embassy’s mailbox.

The resolution expresses the solidarity of AKEL with the Communist Party Ukraine and calls upon the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the OSCE to deal with the issue, declaring that AKEL will raise the issue at every international forum and body.

Moreover, all the other political forces in Cyprus are urged to support this effort.

The resolution denounces the criminalization of the Communist Party of Ukraine’s functioning as an attempt to silence the main opposition force in the country, a force that is opposed to the country being surrendered to the US-NATO-EU-IMF and is against its use as a vehicle for the escalation of Western aggression against Russia.

Furthermore, the resolution also states that AKEL considers that the ban on the Communist Party of Ukraine is part of a series of prosecutions and bans against Communist Parties, the ideology and symbols of the communist movement in a number of EU member states.

The resolution recalls that historically anti-communist persecutions have been the harbinger of wider persecutions and attacks on democracy and freedom.

The resolution also points out the hypocrisy of NATO and the EU, which is criticised, adding that the EU also bears additional responsibilities, given that at the same time as it proclaims its adherence to values and principles, it has concluded an Association Agreement with Ukraine despite the violation of human rights and freedoms by the Ukrainian Government.

Within the framework of the protest meeting organized, an address was made by the member of the Political Bureau of AKEL Christos Christofides, who said that in Ukraine a plan is being implemented that was drawn up several years ago by NATO, US and EU circles which also includes extreme anti-democratic measures such as banning the Communist Party of Ukraine.

Christos. Christofides went on to say that since 2014 when the undemocratic overthrow of the Yanukovych government in Ukraine was overthrown, “crimes are being committed against our comrades in Ukraine in order to silence any voice reacting and resisting the NATO plans”.

He added that the rigged trial that led to the banning of the Communist Party Ukraine was the climax of the undemocratic parody.

Recalling that AKEL in its own history was twice forced into illegality and is well aware of their mechanisms of repression and persecution which seek to silence the real forces of resistance, he said that we know that these machinations in the Ukraine are part of the attempt to impose a solution on the Ukraine issue that will serve the interests of the imperialist plans.

He also said that the whole effort is aimed at the encirclement of Russia by NATO forces and the geostrategic redesigning of Eurasia.

Communist parties, such as AKEL, have no right to remain silent in the face of this effort, Christos Christofides continued, adding that “the machinations in some way are also knocking on our own door with other forms of attacks being waged on the people’s movement of the Left.”

We call on all democratic people and forces throughout the world to raise their voices and take a stand, to condemn these anti-democratic actions and demand the lifting of the decision to prohibit the functioning of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Christos Christofides went on to state that “the crimes being committed against our comrades in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world must stop” and that those committing them should know that history – as in the past – will vindicate us.

In conclusion, he said that in Ukraine went they went so far as to sentence those who stood in the way of Hitler fascism.