Issue # 1426      2 September 2009

Lithuania:

Right wing attempts to criminalise socialism

In September, 2009 the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania plans to give final approval to amendments to the country’s penal code which will criminalise the public approval, denying, belittling or justifying “genocide committed by communism and fascism”. The draft amendments, if approved, will also criminalise the public “blackmail” of so-called “members of Lithuania’s freedom fighters movement” – the armed groups, initially Nazi-backed and later Western-backed, who between 1944–1953 fought against the Soviet army and Lithuania’s socialists.

These amendments were submitted by the ruling party “Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian democrats” and envisage penalties of up to three years imprisonment.

The Socialist Party of Lithuania (use of the term “Communist Party” is already banned in Lithuania) points out that a large part of the so-called “Freedom Fighters” that this legislation seeks to protect were Nazi collaborators and took part in mass killings of civilians in Lithuania during the WWII; many of them were trained by the retreating Nazi army and special services to commit terrorist acts, which they continued to perpetrate during the post-war years, mainly against civilians, to sabotage the creation of the new socialist Lithuania.

The political party “Frontas” and the Socialist Party of Lithuania appeal to “all progressive organisations” in the world to regard the proposed laws as “signs of revanchism and fascism, a direct assault against freedom of opinion and human rights and to use all possible legal pressure and influence so that the shameful amendments do not come into force”.

Next article – Harry Black – 90 not out

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