COMMUNISTS in Ukraine have condemned an attack on the Rabochaya Gazeta (Workers Newspaper) which faces a ban over trumped-up allegations of promoting “armed insurrection.”

The newspaper was served with papers that the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) claimed was based on “falsifications, cynical forgery” and manipulation after lawyers associated the word struggle with “armed seizure of power.”

It based the claims on a speech made by Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko published by the newspaper in which he spoke about the struggle for workers’ rights. 

Party officials alleged that police planted stickers in the CPU offices during the “illegal search” in May 2018, and then claimed they were calling on communists to take up arms against the state on Victory Day.

A statement said the CPU “condemns the blatant violation of the
rights and freedoms of citizens of Ukraine by the Poroshenko regime and expresses the hope that common sense will triumph and the judges will accept decision based on general democratic
principles and the inalienable human right to freedom of
conscience and speech.”

Rabochaya Gazeta was first released in Kiev in 1897 and in the last decade its circulation was as high as 600,000.