Gov't, courts up attack on communists

Former communists face a crackdown at the hands of the government as the judiciary recently confirmed the communist pasts of judges and state attorneys must be made public knowledge. Meanwhile, leading government figures are pushing to pursue banning the contemporary Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) altogether despite recommendations from legal experts against it.

"The interior minister concluded … it would not be appropriate with the information that is available to [proceed with banning the party]. The government, nevertheless, decided [a proposal] will be prepared," Prime Minister Petr Nečas told journalists Nov. 23.

Nečas said that before Christmas, the government would present its proposal to the Supreme Administrative Court (NSS) to ban the KSČM's activities, even after four experts from the Interior Ministry presented their unanimous analysis that there were no grounds on which to suspend the party.

"The KSČM has done nothing wrong to be legitimately prosecuted," said KSČM spokeswoman Věra Žežulková. "Despite repeated pressure from the government, many experts have confirmed this, even though they aren't KSČM supporters. The very fact that the government does not want to prosecute the KSČM for any specific reason or act, but 'orders' someone to find a reason, only confirms a politically motivated order and conduct that is contrary to all democratic principles."

The most recent campaign to get rid of the KSČM was launched in July, when the government asked the Interior Ministry to put together a proposal that justified banning the party. The panel put together by the ministry, which included two lawyers, a political scientist and an expert on extremism, agreed that in past reasons enumerated by the NSS for abolishing political parties, there was not a strong enough legal argument to justify banning the party.

The panel found that the activities of the KSČM did not meet the standards laid out by the NSS for the banishment of political parties, as there was no information available that indicated the KSČM was involved in cooperating with associations that aggressively promote communist ideology or threaten democracy.

Even if a ban made it through domestic law, there is "a limited chance to succeed because of the European law in this area," according to Miroslav Mareš, the political scientist on the panel. In the past, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has often ruled against bans on communist parties in Turkey, Hungary and elsewhere.

An 'asymmetrical approach'

"We can see repression on the right side of the political spectrum, like against Nazis, and in this sense, there is a sort of asymmetrical approach to the left- and right-leaning extremism [at the ECHR], but we cannot change the approach of Europe," Mareš said. He added it would be more appropriate for such a case to be pursued by a nonpolitical organ rather than a government entity.

Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court (ÚS) ruled Nov. 22 that individual courts must make public whether judges were members of the pre-1989 Communist Party (KSČ), and if the courts do not have the information readily available, they must seek it out.

"Most of these people were not real communists at heart; they were opportunists who saw this as elevating their own career, which brings up the question, do we need people with such moral forces as judges?" said Tomáš Pecina, an activist who spearheaded the original complaint that led to the rulings. "Everyone now knows who the communists are, and it is possible for us to make some comparisons and relate the quality of decisions to the past of these judges making the decisions."

The decision put teeth on a breakthrough ruling made by the ÚS last year that said the communist past of judges was public information. After the original ruling last year, the Justice Ministry published a list that showed about one-fifth of judges had been members of the KSČ. However, if the judges did not voluntarily provide that information, they were not included on the list, and shortly after the ruling, Pecina was turned down by the NSS when he requested information about some judges' communist affiliations that had not been made public in the list. The NSS ruled that if the information was not at the disposal of the courts, the courts are not bound by law to provide it. The most recent ÚS decision was a rejection of that NSS opinion.

"Two of the judges on the [NSS] panel were actually former communists themselves, and they didn't excuse themselves. They decided not to follow the authoritative decision," Pecina said. "The decision about revealing who was a member of the Communist Party was already settled. What is now at stake is that the courts cannot simply decide to regard the case law of the [ÚS] as mere recommendations."

Members of the KSČM have rejected the ruling, saying it violated laws on personal data protection.

"There is one-sided pressure being exerted on the Czech judiciary that is unacceptable," Žežulková said. "We fear this is not about the concerns about the past of the judges but about the creation of an atmosphere that will become an obstacle to the impartiality of courts."

- Klára Jiřičná contributed to this report.

Cat Contiguglia can be reached at
ccontiguglia@praguepost.com