14 July 2021

The South African Communist Party (SACP) is shocked by the attempts from sections of the German federal election to ban the German Communist Party from taking part in the upcoming elections in September. With this ban on participation in the September vote, the German Communist Party is also threatened with the possibly of its status as a legal political party revoked, the reason being that it is a Communist Party.

Political attacks on communists are by no means new in German history. German Communists have repeatedly had their existence threatened. Within days of the founding of the Communist Party of Germany in January 1919, the leaders of the counterrevolution that pushed back against workers’ uprisings at the time targeted the Communist Party for destruction. Communists Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered.

This fate met many communists in the years that followed. In January 1933, the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler, hoisted into office by the masters of industry and the banks, completely outlawed the Communist Party. Communists were among the first to be arrested by the Nazis and thrown into prisons and concentration camps, tortured, and murdered. Ernst Thälmann, the Chairperson of the German Communist Party, was also affected.

After the fall of Hitler and the end of the war in 1945, German communists were subjected to new persecutions by the West German government. When resistance to remilitarisation in the Federal Republic of Germany became too strong in the early 1950s, the Free German Youth (FDJ), an organization in which young communists and other anti-fascists had joined forces, was initially banned. The German Communist Party was banned again in 1956. Many of the communists who were thrown into prisons after appearing before the same judges who had sentenced them during the Nazi era.

Since then, the German Communist Party (DKP), reconstituted in 1968, faced many difficulties imposed by the state. Communists chalk it up to the fact that they consistently oppose armaments and war, stand up for the social rights of the people, and expose the anti-social measures of the state, especially now in the health crisis.

Peace-loving people across the world must condemn these anti-communist measures and suppression of the basic tenets of democracy.

We call upon the authorities to reverse this decision and uphold the democratic right of freedom of speech and other basic human rights.

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