BRITAIN’S communists have condemned the Indian government’s raid on the home of opposition leader Pinarayi Vijayan, calling it “politically motivated.”

The Communist Party of Britain (CPB) also condemned the arrests of several leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), who protested publicly outside the Delhi headquarters of the Enforcement Directorate in support of Mr Vijayan.

In a joint statement, CPB general secretary Alex Gordon and international secretary Kevan Nelson said: “The use of lawfare and police repression by right-wing, conservative governments as weapons against progressive popular forces has become an international phenomenon from the Czech Republic, to Jordan, to Kenya, and now India, the world’s largest democracy.

“The Communist Party of Britain expresses our total solidarity with India’s communists and with our sister party in its struggle to resist the repressive and undemocratic attacks by politicised agencies of the Indian state on freedom of association [and] expression, and on the political right… to organise.”

The CPB leaders highlighted India’s communists’ ongoing fight against the “repressive anti-working-class policies of the Modi government,” saying: “The struggle to reclaim and expand political space for the working class will be protracted, but Indian Communists’ line of march remains entirely unbroken.”