The Venice Commission, an advisory body of the Council of Europe, said Ukraine’s decommunization law violates the European legal standards and advised to revise it.
The law was passed by the Ukrainian parliament on April 9. It bans propaganda of the two totalitarian ideologies, the Communist and the Nazi, and required up to five years in prison for production and distribution of their symbols.
The law, which became commonly known as a “decommunization” bill, also banned for the political parties and media to use the Communist or Nazi names or symbols.
“(The law) has a legitimate aim, but does not comply with European standards,” reads the statement by the Venice Commission. “The law introduces unfair sanctions that should be revised.”
Ukraine promised to make amendments to the law.
The human rights groups have previously criticized the law for potential limiting the freedom of expression.
The mass refusal of the Communist symbols and other remnants of Soviet past became a trend in Ukraine after the Euromaidan Revolution of 2013-2014. The following Russian aggression against Ukraine, with the members of Communist Party often instigating the anti-Ukrainian moods, galvanized the process and led to a mass toppling of the monuments to the Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.
President Petro Poroshenko signed the decommunization law in May. The law has already brought to changes of many toponymic names, including more than 80 city names, all over the country.
As a development of the “decommunization” law, the District Administrative Court of Kyiv banned on Dec. 16 the activity of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Once a major political party, it has since almost disappeared from the political scene.
But the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia, and the areas of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, occupied by Russian troops and their separatist proxies, have become the last resort for the Ukrainian communists.
In Donetsk, the separatists have installed a Christmas tree next to the gigantic Lenin’s statue at the main city square on Dec. 19. In Luhansk, the local Communists installed a gilded bust of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin on Dec. 18.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
