Communist Youth Movement Banned In Czech Republic
Wednesday March 19 saw a court in Prague, Czech Republic, ban the popular communist youth movement, KSM, the youth wing of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia.
The Communist Party is the third largest party in the Czech Republic.
The KSM has been under attack by the right-wing Czech government and, in particular, by the minister for the Interior for the last number of years in a blatant attempt to undermine the growing Communist Party. Unable to ban the party they have this month succeeded in banning the youth movement.
The court decision cements the government’s policy of attempting to criminalize socialism and those who promote it and, effectively, make it illegal to campaign against capitalism. This decision is an outright attack upon democracy, upon the right of workers to organize and upon socialist ideology in general. It comes as part of a European and indeed global assault upon socialist and communist ideologies and movements.
In reflecting upon history people would do well to remember the famous words written by German Nazi collaborator turned prisoner Pastor Martin Niemoller.
First they came for the Communists,
but I was not a communist so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists,
but I was neither, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Jews,
but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.
Young activists in Ireland, at the request of the KSM and the World Federation of Democratic Youth, marked the anti-democratic court decision by delivering letters of protest to both the Twenty-Six County Department of Foreign Affairs and the Czech Embassy.
Éirígí’s Daithí Mac an Mhaistír extended solidarity to the activists of the KSM.
“There has been a worrying trend in recent times of European governments banning political organisations that they see as a threat to the status quo.
“This has included the decision by the Spanish state to make it illegal for any expression of Basque left-nationalism to be represented in elections in the Basque Country and, most recently, this nefarious decision in Prague.
“It was not too long ago that British and unionist governments were banning political parties in this country. So I would appeal for Irish political activists to extend any practical solidarity they can to the Czech communists at this difficult time.
“However, I have no doubt that the banning order will only strengthen the resolve of the KSM to play their part in the struggle for freedom, socialism and peace.”