March 01, 2020
HON. JAROSLAW SZCZEPANKIEWICZ
Charge d'Affaires, Embassy of the Republic of Poland
9th Floor, Del Rosario Law Center
21st Drive corner 20th Drive, Bonifacio Global City
City of Taguig, Metropolitan Manila 1630, Philippines
e-mail : manila.amb.sekretariat@msz.gov.pl
e-mail : manila.consulate@msz.gov.pl

H.E. AMBASSADOR KRZYSZTOF DEBNICKI
Embassy of the Republic of Poland
No. 10, Lorong Damai 9, Off Jalan Damai, 55000
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Email : kualalumpur.amb.sekretariat@msz.gov.pl

PROTEST AGAINST THE TRIAL OF  THE POLISH COMMUNIST PARTY

Gentlemen :

We write to express to you, and through you to the government of the Republic of Poland, our strong protest against the trial of the Polish Communist Party (Polish CP), its newspaper and its cadres. We are incensed to learn that the trial against the Polish CP is to be resumed starting this March 3, despite last year's acquittal verdict which culminated a trial that already lasted for four years.

The resumption of the trial with the accusation of “propaganda of communist ideology” by the communist newspaper “Brzask” (Dawn) and the website of the Polish CP, threatens cadres of the Polish CP with a severe sentence of imprisonment. But the Polish CP is not an underground party, and is not advocating an armed struggle or a violent overthrow of the Polish government. It defies imagination that your government is prosecuting the Polish CP in an apparent campaign to illegalize this open and legal party.

There is no rationale at all for persecuting peaceful dissenters of your capitalist system, who only aim at winning the hearts and minds of the Polish people to a socialist choice, and to have a share of political power through parliamentary means. The Polish CP is bringing to the Polish working classes a program for their rebuilding of a socialist society, and the party is ready to engage in any civil debate on the merits of socialism.

Instead of taking the fascist short-cut of simply illegalizing the Polish CP, why can't the Polish government engage in such a debate ? Your government has all the powerful propaganda means to pit against the dreaded “propaganda of communist ideology”, unless your government is not sure that the Polish working peoples really appreciate the merits of the crisis-ridden capitalist system.

Even in our country, communist advocacy is not banned ; only the use of the armed struggle against the state (which is being done here only by maoist and jihadist terrorists) is proscribed. Any attempt to criminalize communist activity, by amending the penal code and equating communism with nazism/fascism or militarism, is bound to fail. Nobody equates communism with fascism and militarism, as people always remember that communist parties everywhere in Asia were at the forefront of the struggle against fascism and militarism during, and even before, World War II. Despite the backward economic and other situations in our country, members of the communist-led People's Army Against Japan (HUKBALAHAP, or “Huks” during WW-II) were given due recognition and pensions even by successive reactionary governments here.

Communist leadership in the anti-fascist national liberation struggles is also true in your country and region, but unfortunately, blind anti-communism in some politically-backward parts of Europe leads to senseless attempts at the revision of history. Revanchist attempts at destroying history by removing monuments, street names and symbols associated with communism and the labor movement –- and replacing them with those of the fascist period –- will have no lasting effect. Your government cannot overturn history : it was the fascists, and not the communists, who created hell in Oswiecim (Auschwitz), Brzezinka (Birkenau), Chelmno, Treblinka, Majdanek, Sorbibor and many other death camps in your country where millions of Polish, Soviet and other peoples were systematically and mercilessly exterminated.

Warsaw became the most devastated city in Europe during WW-II –- and Manila became known as the “Warsaw of the East” –- due to fascist and militarist attacks, and not because of the communists. Even a review of the western film, “Schindler's List”, would confirm that the tormentors at Krakow-Plaszow and other concentration camps in your country were nazis, and not communists. And lest we forget, it was the Soviet Red Army which liberated Poland and many other countries (including the northern parts of China and Korea) from the fascist and militarist jackboots.

During the war, the fascists and militarists aimed at exterminating all “inferior races”; after the war, socialist societies were built in your region under the leadership of communists who advocated human equality, social justice and internationalism. National liberation movements and the whole of progressive humanity continue to appreciate the historic assistance of the socialist community of nations (which then included Poland) in the post-war struggles against colonialism, apartheid, zionism and neo-fascism.

History also cannot erase the fact that Lech Walesa, his “solidarnosc” fraudsters and his US and Vatican mentors, together ripped the socialist system during the Gorbachyov counter-revolution period, and delivered the Polish working classes back to the chains of capitalism, where they still remain mired. The Polish government may prohibit all symbols that are related to communism, but cannot erase the fact that the communist-led socialist period brought social security to the working masses, while the return to capitalism only meant the return of unemployment, social inequality and poverty. History indeed cannot be falsified, and the persecution of the Polish CP cannot help to mask the lack or absence of democracy and social justice in your country.

The Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP-1930, the Philippine Communist Party) therefore strongly condemns and denounces the anti-communist persecution by the Polish government of the Polish CP. We demand that all persecution of communists and punishment of communist ideas in Poland, as well as every kind of banning or restriction of the activity of the Polish CP, be stopped immediately.

Very sincerely,

CENTRAL COMMITTEE, PKP-1930

by :

ANTONIO E. PARIS
General Secretary