On 17/03/23, a delegation of the International Relations Section of the CC of the KKE, led by the Party’s MEP Lefteris Nikolaou-Alavanos, made a demarche to the Polish Embassy in Athens, protesting against the escalation of the criminalization of communist ideology and action by the Polish government through the vehicle of the recent revision of the Criminal Code, which is due to be activated in the coming months.

Chanting slogans such as 'Neither in Greece nor in Poland can threats scare us, hands off the communists' and 'Solidarity with the struggle of the peoples, no to the persecution of communists', the delegation denounced the anti-communist new Criminal Code, which provides for prison sentences even for the possession of a book or a poster from the era of the construction of socialism in the country, and expressed its full solidarity with the Communist Party of Poland.

The delegation posted a memorandum at the entrance to the Embassy stating the following: “We hereby express our strongest protest to the Polish government for the escalation of the criminalization of the communist ideology and action through the vehicle of the recent revision of the Criminal Code, which is due to be activated in the coming months.

This new, even more reactionary Criminal Code is to be added to the years-long persecution of the Communist Party of Poland, whose members are facing trials for having committed the ‘crime’ of publishing a newspaper. University professors are being prosecuted for conducting Marxist seminars at universities, demonstrators are being prosecuted for wearing a shirt bearing the picture of Lenin, etc.

According to the changes in the new Criminal Code, any person who, among other things, ‘publicly promotes’ or ‘produces, records or imports, possesses, sells, offers, stores, keeps, presents, transfers or displays in printed, electronic or any other form communist symbols and ideas’ shall be punished with up to three years’ imprisonment.

The above means that practically anyone in possession of a book, a poster, or a historical film, even from the very history of Poland in the 20^th century, is potentially guilty and may face prison sentences.

The Communist Party of Greece expresses its full solidarity with the Communist Party of Poland. It supports the right to free and unhindered political expression and action of communists and other radical militants in Poland. It condemns the unhistorical equation of communism with Nazism-fascism by the Polish government and other EU member states, with the backing of the EU. It demands that the Polish authorities should immediately stop all persecution against the communists and withdraw the unacceptable and anti-communist new Criminal Code. It also demands that all anti-communist laws and provisions that prohibit the actions of communists and violate the basic people’s freedoms in Poland be repealed”.

20.03.2023