The Communist Party of Canada notes with grave concern the stepped up assault on the Communist and revolutionary forces across Europe in recent weeks. In Hungary, a state court is threatening to imprison the entire leadership of the Hungarian Communist Workers’ Party (HCWP) for having committed “libel in a public place”, while in The Netherlands, an exiled leading member of the Filipino Communist movement, Jose Maria Sison, has just been arrested on trumped up murder charges.

The actions against the HCWP are the most specious imaginable. In 2005, the 21st Congress of that party, following an inner-party dispute, decided to expel its former vice-president Attila Vajnai. Following the Congress, Mr. Vajnai challenged his expulsion in a Budapest court and won his reinstatement – a most bizarre and unacceptable form of state interference in the affairs of any political party.

The leading body of the HCWP publicly characterized the court decision as a political judgement, one which had no precedent in the legal history of the last two decades. The HCWP called the judgment a form of revenge against the Hungarian Communist Workers’ Party, which had initiated a public referendum against the privatisation of hospitals.

The Budapest Court demanded that the HCWP officially retract its criticism of the decision and declare the judgement had nothing to do with politics. The leadership of the party refused.

Now the Hungarian state is attempting to use these fallacious grounds to cripple and potentially liquidate the HCWP precisely at a time when the left and Communist movement is growing once again in Hungary.

The Communist Party of Canada condemns this transparent manoeuvre of the Hungarian authorities as a vengeful assault against the Hungarian Communists, and calls for international solidarity in defence of the legal and political rights of the HWCP.

Meanwhile in The Netherlands, national police arrested National Democratic Front of the Philippines chief political consultant Jose Maria Sison in Utrecht on August 28, broke down the front door of his home and carted away computers, documents, CDs, and other files. Mr. Sison was later charged with “incitement to murder” in the Philippines of Arturo Kintanar and Romulo Tabara. He is currently being held in solitary confinement at the National Penitentiary in The Hague

The arrest and confinement of Sison, who has lived in Holland since 1987 and is a former professor of English literature and accomplished poet, is a blatant act of repression undertaken by the Dutch authorities at the behest of both the Arroyo regime in The Philippines, and the CIA in Langley, Virginia.

This is not the first repressive act against Sison while in exile. In August 2002, then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell declared Sison an “international terrorist.” The very next month, the Dutch government informed him that in accordance with The Netherlands’ “sanction regulation against terrorism” his benefits had been terminated and his bank account frozen.

The arrest of Professor Sison, the chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) which has been involved in negotiations with the Filipino regime, is a crude attempt to derail all efforts for a peaceful, political settlement of the lengthy conflict in The Philippines.

The Communist Party of Canada denounces this reactionary act, and calls for the immediate and unconditional release of Professor Sison.

We note that these most recent attacks come on the heels of other acts of state repression against Communist and left forces elsewhere in Europe – the actions of the Czech Republic to ban the Young Communist League in that country, and legal attacks on the Ukrainian, Lithuanian and other Communist Parties in the former socialist countries.

These actions are far from coincidental. They reflect a growing alarm in bourgeois government circles that the left forces are once again gaining in strength in direct proportion to the abject failures of the capitalist policies of neoliberalism, militarization and war. It is vital that all progressive and democratic opinion around the world speak out against such crude anti-communism and fascist-like behaviour.

Central Executive Committee,

Communist Party of Canada

Sept. 7, 2007