Judges at an administrative court in Kiev have refused to try a case banning the activities of the Communist Party of Ukraine, after police conducted a search and seizure operation in the office of one their colleagues.
Judge Valery Kuzmenko, who was presiding over the Justice
Ministry’s suit against the Communist Party, withdrew from the
case on Wednesday, the Interfax news agency reports.
All the other judges in the Kiev District Administrative Court
have also filed applications to be excused from hearing the case,
Kuzmenko said.
The judge explained the move by saying that the prosecutors and
police searched his office and seized his computer, with working
materials on the Communist Party case and others.
He said he views the law enforcement officials’ actions as an
attempt to put pressure on the court.
According to the prosecutors, Monday’s search and seizure was
performed as part of the criminal case, launched over the
“abuse of power or position” and “forgery” by
the judges, RIA-Novosti reports.
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MORE: Ukraine communist leader: Kiev labeled 7 mn people
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The Communist Party has been speaking against Ukraine’s new
authorities since the coup in February 2014, which saw President
Viktor Yanukovich ousted.
However, the persecution of the Communists Party began in April,
shortly after Kiev launched a military operation against the
country’s south-eastern regions.
Communist leader, Pyotr Simonenko, said the military campaign is
Kiev’s war against its own people, stressing that if he was the
head of state, he “would immediately recall all the
troops.”
He openly accused the Ukrainian authorities of the “slaughter
of civilians and mass murder,” saying they had labeled the 7
million people in Donetsk and Lugansk as
“terrorists.”
In June, Ukraine’s
justice minister, Pavel Petrenko, announced a lawsuit to ban the
Communist Party in Ukraine.
In mid-summer, the Communist faction was dissolved by
the Ukrainian
parliament, with
the official explanation for the move being an insufficient
number of MPs in the party.
Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, said that 308 criminal cases
had been launched against members of the Communist Party, with
its leaders accused of supporting Crimea’s accession to the
Russian Federation and backing the creation of the People’s
Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as financing the
rebels.
In November, a group of MPs introduced a draft law to the
parliament, making any dissemination of Communist ideology in
Ukraine illegal and proposing punishment of up to 10 years in
prison for the perpetrators.
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The Communist Party banning trial was rescheduled several times
and eventually postponed by the Kiev District Administrative
Court. The decision was reversed by an appeal court on December
24.
The Communists aren’t the only party facing persecution in
Ukraine over their opposition stance. MPs from six parties have
also come under scrutiny.
On February 2, Radical Party leader, Oleg Lyashko, demanded the
dissolving of the opposition block after it became the only
faction in the parliament to vote against recognizing Russia as
“an aggressor state” in the Ukrainian conflict.