About the online petition

Dear Comrades and Friends,

As you certainly al ready know the reactionary and anticommunist forces acting in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe have not achieved all their goals promoted trough the draft resolution on the "Need for international condemnation of the crimes of totalitarian communist regimes".

On 25 of January, the day of the vote, there were present in Strasbourg only 153 from the total of 325 regular PACE members who voted as follows: 99 in favor, 42 against and 12 abstentions. Officially the document is considered approved in spite of the very low participation. [http://assembly.coe.int ]

The second vote, which regards the adoption of the "Recommendation" i.e. the measures for the implementation by the member states of the resolution showed the following result: 88 in favor, 50 against and 11 abstentions.

The fact that the "Recommendation" was endorsed by less than 2/3 means that the implementation of the measures is not obligatory for the member states, i.e. there is no "Recommendation". The result regarding the vote of the anticommunist document represents in our view an important victory for the democratic and popular movement.

This result was only possible thanks to the great protest movement in Europe and many other countries embracing communist and workers parties, internationally well known progressives figures and fighters, trade unions and a big number of trade unionists, youth organizations, movements in defense of democratic rights and liberties, antifascist and resistance fighters organizations, scientific and student unions, women organizations, anti-war initiatives, organizations of farmers and small entrepreneurs, many elected officials in the local government bodies, members of national and European parliaments of different political stand.

An important contribution to the success of the campaign was made by a big number of well known artists, intellectuals and journalists, of prominent historians, lawyers and university professors as well as by the communist and democratic mined immigrants and foreign workers from different countries living and working in some western European countries.

An additional fact showing the force and the effectiveness of the mobilization is the shift of the correlation of forces inside PACE in comparison to the "positive" vote enjoined by the same document in the Political Affairs Commission of PACE on December 14, 2005.

There is no doubt that very important was also the contribution of thousands of supporters from 40 countries around the world endorsing the on - line protest motion STOP ANTICOMMUNISM opened on January 14 on http://red.kke.gr

The 2482 signatures collected until 24 of January were transmitted together with thousands other signatures and protest statements and resolutions personally to Mr. Rene van der Linden the president of PACE as well as to the leaders of the political groups of PACE during the manifestations and other actions in Strasbourg.

We would like to thank all of you participating in the mobilizations and actively supporting and popularizing the on-line petition STOP ANTICOMMUNISM http://red.kke.gr for the success of the campaigns.

We thank also all comrades and friends who after January 27 2006 continue to endorse the on-line motion.

We would like to ensure you that your signatures are also handed over to the President of PACE.

Dear Comrades and Friends,

Considering that in this specific moment the campaign STOP ANTICOMMUNISM achieved very successfully its main goal, the on-line petition on http://red.kke.gr will remain open for further endorsement until February 11 2006.

At the same time we all know that the imperialist, reactionary forces will continue to insist in their new anticommunist campaign by all means.

So we believe it is necessary to continue to stay on alert against any anticommunist move. It is necessary more than ever to organize broad resistance and to reinforce the solidarity with the communist parties and the communists facing repression and discrimination.

In this regard we invite all of you to express solidarity with the struggle of the comrades of the Communist Youth Union of the Czech Republic against the unjustified attacks by the Czech authorities.Join the online petition at http://4KSM.kke.gr

Section for international relations
Section for information technology

mailto:cpg@int.kke.gr