(The following article is from the April 1-15, 2008 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St. Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3).

On March 19, the trial to determine the legal status of the Czech Communist Youth Union (KSM) began. It ended a day later with the courts upholding an October 2006 decision to ban the organization by the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic.

     The KSM had filed an appeal against the Ministry's decision. Coincidentally or otherwise, the trial was finally scheduled to begin just three days before the 8th Congress of the KSM, which opened on March 22 in Prague.

     The Interior Ministry attack on the legal existence of the KSM started in November 2005, under a pretext that the KSM was engaged in activities restricted to political parties. This claim was baseless, since the Czech legal system defines the exclusive area of political parties as participation in parliamentary elections.

     The second line of attack targeted the Marxist character of the KSM. The Ministry demanded that the KSM renounce its political program, communist identity, goals, and theoretical basis in Marx, Engels and Lenin.

     The Interior Ministry later dropped these arguments, in favour of claiming that the KSM's goal to replace private ownership of the means of production with collective ownership was illegal. In response, the KSM organized an information campaign in the Czech Republic and abroad, filed an action against the decision of the Ministry, and intensified its public activities.

     The KSM has since gathered 150,000 names in a petition campaign against a plan to construct a US military base in the Czech Republic. The Communist youth have also kept up their struggle in defence of free education for all (threatened with a plan to introduce fees for university studies), and started a public campaign against the disastrous social and economic policies of the current right wing government.

     The KSM is refusing to submit to the court ruling, and its Congress was held as scheduled. They are calling on all supporters to publicize the growing anti-communism and violations of fundamental democratic rights, which have become state policy in the Czech Republic.

     For more information, visit http://www.solidnet.org.