15.January 2006.
Communists from the Nordic Countries:

STOP THE WITCH-HUNT ON EUROPES COMMUNISTS

The undersigned Nordic communist parties take in this statement very strong exception to the draft resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which will be put forward at the meeting of the Assembly the 23rd – 27th of January titled “Need for international condemnation of crimes of totalitarian communist regimes”. The draft resolution is adopted by the Political Affairs Committee and the author is Göran Lindblad (Sweden) from the European People’s Party (Christian Democrat).
Among those who have approved and support this condemnation are members of parliaments in countries that do not hesitate to persecute and imprison leaders of communist parties and popular movements, while closing their eyes to or directly participate in glorifying Nazi symbols and Nazi warcriminals.

The world famous Greek composer and writer – Mikis Theodorakis – is in a statement pointing out, that “The Council of Europe has decided to change History. To distort it by equalizing the victims with the aggressors, the heroes with the criminals, and the communists with the Nazis”.

Nazi-Germany was crushed primarily due to the Soviet Union at the cost of the lives of more than 20 million soviet peoples. Hundred of thousands of communists gave their lives in the fight against Nazism – also in the Nordic countries – by placing themselves at the head of the popular resistance-movements all over Europe.
In the draft resolution there are great worries, because “Communist parties are legal and active in some countries, even if in some cases they have not distanced themselves from the crimes committed by totalitarian communist regimes in the past”, and communist parties are encouraged “to reassess the history of communism and their own past”. The draft claims that those crimes to a great extend is the result of the Marxist theory about the existence of class struggle.

Communist parties have been subjects to suspicion since the very beginning; there has been conducted illegal surveillance upon them; the party-members have been spied on and persecuted, and in some phases of history, many of the parties have been forbidden by law.
In Finland the white terror was turned loose on the communists and other left movements during and after the civil war and again during the 1930s and the Second World War.

In Norway the communist party was forbidden during the German occupation and the Norwegian Quisling-administration. Many communists were executed or placed in concentration camps.

In Denmark the parliament under German occupation passed a law, which – in clear contradiction to the Danish constitution – forbid the communist party and communist activity. Communists were executed, imprisoned and handed over to the Germans and thereby to German concentration camps.

In Sweden internment camps were set up for communists; the communist press was attacked, burned down and denied access to public communication lines.

Ever since their foundations, the communist parties has been at head of the fight for peace, democracy and national independence; this was at most the case in the fight against German fascism. And later it was the fact in the fight against NATO-membership during the cold war; against the dangerous armament and against surrender of national self-determination through EU-membership. Communists have been and are an active force in the fight for the interests of the ordinary people; for economic, social and political democratic progresses – and against war, political reaction and deterioration of the daily life of ordinary people.

The draft resolution of PACE lies ideologically in full continuation with the neo-liberal offensive. The rights and results, that the working class has achieved in its fight in the economic, social and political areas, is being pushed backward. Individualism is placed above collectivism, and the interests of society are being submitted to the interests of profits of the big corporations. This is done through deregulations, privatizations, increased user’s fees and other reductions in the lives of ordinary people. The self-determination of the single EU-memberstate is subject to further deterioration in the shape of super-national neo-liberal EU-politics, and the EU plans to further develop its military ambitions all over the world.

While the Council of Europe is about to consider a draft resolution of enforced attacks on communists and other labour-, democratic- and popular forces, the very same Council of Europe is closing its eyes to the US-led war on Iraq, a country left in ruins full of American prisons, where thousands of innocent victims are tortured daily in a horrific and obvious manner. For this great crime against humanity, as well as for the contemporary torture camp at Guantanamo, the Council of Europe has absolutely nothing to say.

So how can anyone believe, that they are honestly concerned about human rights, when even within their own home, Europe, they have allowed for CIA-planes, filled with people without any rights, to drive them into special prisons in order to be tortured?
Communists are a part of the popular, democratic process and fight in every single country. We see this draft resolution as the beginning of an extensive condemnation and persecution of all democratic forces. Today the communists; tomorrow unionists and people from the peace-movement? And the day after tomorrow?

The undersigned communist parties have taken initiative to several protests against the draft resolution such as an appeal to sign a protest among unionist and political leaders, cultural figures and others.

The communists of the Nordic countries encourage you all to distance yourselves to and to condemn this draft resolution, which is to be submitted to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) later this January!

Communist Party in Denmark, Betty Frydensbjerg Carlsson, chairman.
Communist Party of Denmark, Henrik Stamer Hedin, chaiman
Communist Party of Finland, Yrjö Hakanen, chairman
Communist Party of Norway, Zafer Gözet, chaiman.
Communist Party of Sweden, Jan Jönsson, chairman