Reforming Poland's hate-crime legislation may mean criminalizing communism. An amendment to the criminal code awaiting the president's signature would ban a broad category of communist symbols. Left-wing politicians say the law does more to violate human rights than protect them.

Poland is on the verge of banning communist symbols in a change to the country's penal code that could make everything from the hammer and sickle and red star to Che Guevara t-shirts illegal.

The amendment would adjust the country's hate-crime legislation to criminalize the "production, distribution, sale or possession ... in print, recordings or other means of fascist, communist or other symbols of totalitarianism." The punishment could be a fine or up to two years in prison. Exceptions could be made for artistic, educational, collecting or research purposes.

Elzbieta Radziszewska, the Polish government's special representative for equal rights issues and a member of the country's ruling Civic Platform (PO) party, proposed the changes to the law in the spring. It has enjoyed broad support from other Civic Platform politicians as well as members of the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, which includes Polish President Lech Kaczynski. The two parties control 375 of the 460 seats in the Polish parliament.

The amendment would beef up an existing hate-crime law that banned "public propagation of fascist and other totalitarian systems." Similar bans on symbols of the Nazi era exist elsewhere in Europe, including Germany, but the breadth of Poland's law - and its application to symbols of communism - is unusual.