Bans on communist symbols
[1] As part of a broader process of decommunization, these bans have mostly been proposed or implemented in countries that belonged to the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, including some post-Soviet states.
"Communism / Marxism–Leninism" (official terminology) was banned in Indonesia following the aftermath of the 30 September coup attempt and the subsequent anti-communist killings, by the adoption of TAP MPRS no.
27/1999 in 1999 (the corresponding explanatory memorandums of whom explain that "[Communism / Marxism-Leninism includes] the struggle fundaments and tactics taught by ... Stalin, Mao Tse Tung et cetera ..."), which are still in force.
[3] Some of its violators were people with no knowledge of symbols of communism, in which cases the authorities frequently freed them with only minor punishment or small fine applied.
[5] Other socialist and left-wing symbols, while not officially prohibited by law (as democratic socialism itself remains acceptable in the country) are still widely condemned by the Indonesian government and considered as being closely related to communism.
[citation needed] In addition, since the New Order regime took power in 1967, the hammer and sickle has been highly stigmatized in the country, similar to the stigma surrounding Nazi symbolism in the Western world and the Imperial Japanese flag in South Korea.
[citation needed] In April 2017, Indonesian police detained a Malaysian tourist at a hotel in Mataram for wearing a T-shirt with an image of the hammer and sickle symbol.
[7] Earlier, in 2012, the city of Lviv in Western Ukraine banned the public display of all communist symbols, including ones not related to Soviet communism.
[25] In July 2008 the European Court of Human Rights considered the challenge of Attila Vajnai who was charged with a misdemeanor for use of the red star and declared the Hungarian law to be in violation of the freedom of expression.
The Court recognised the gross violations by the Nazi and communist regimes; however, it noted that modern Hungary is a stable democracy with negligible chance of dictatorship, therefore restrictions on the freedom of expression have no justification in the country in the form of a "clear, pressing and specific social need".
[23] In 2009, Poland amended Article 256 of its penal code, banning the display of "fascist, communist [and] other totalitarian symbols" unless they were being used "as part of artistic, educational, collecting or academic activity."
[33][34] The Kuomintang government in Taiwan outlawed the flag of the People's Republic of China in 1952, pursuant to the Temporary Provisions against the Communist Rebellion in the country's constitution.
The temporary provisions were repealed in 1991, but a general ban on communist ideology and symbolism in the National Security Law of the Republic of China, promulgated in 1976, was not annulled until 2011.
[35] In late 2020, a legislator from the Democratic Progressive Party proposed an amendment to the National Security Law which would ban the public display of the flag of the People's Republic of China.
The draft proposed that offenders be given two to five years in prison and a fine if they manufacture, commercialize, distribute or convey symbols or propaganda that use the hammer or sickle or any other means of dissemination favourable to communism.
[57] Law 51/1991, (article 3. h) on the National Security of Romania considers the following as threats to national security: "the initiation, organisation, perpetration, or the supporting in any way of the totalitarian or extremist actions of a communist, fascist, iron guardist, or of any other origin, of the racial, anti-Semitic, revisionist, separatist actions that can endanger in any way the unity and territorial integrity of Romania, as well as the instigation to deeds that can put in, danger the order of the state governed by the rule of law".
