Getting Serious About Their Communist Past

Communist crimes should never go
statute-barred - Prague conference
The crimes of Communism should not be subject to the statute of limitations as crimes against humanity are not - this is one of the conclusions the two-day international conference Conscience of Europe and Communism, held in Prague, came to today [Monday, ed.].

"Communism can be qualified as a crime against humanity, as it corresponds to its definition involving ill will, slave labour, deportations and murders for political and religious reasons," Czech MEP Jana Hybaskova told journalists on behalf of the meeting's organisers.

She said the condemnation of Communism must be promoted to the European level in the judicial area, also by the hearings the EC plans to hold about these crimes, Hybaskova said.

On Tuesday, the conference, held in the Czech Senate building, is to discuss the establishment of a European institution to deal with Communism and Nazism.

Miroslav Lehky, deputy head of the recently-established Czech Institute for the Studies of Totalitarian Regimes, today said the persecution of political prisoners and killing of civilians attempting to cross the Czechoslovak border with Austria or Germany were crimes against humanity.

"Any law-abiding state is obliged to prosecute a crime irrespective of when and where it occurred and whoever committed it. If the state fails to do this, it ceases to be a law-abiding state," Lehky said.

He said most crimes of Communism have not been punished due to the country's legal order's continuity following the previous regime.

According to the Czech Institute for the Documentation and Investigation of Crimes of Communism (UDV), 234 people were executed in the Communist Czechoslovakia, more than 560 people died while attempting to escape to the West, at least 10,000 died in concetration camps, 1,800 disappeared and 240,000 people were sentenced for political reasons.

Other than those few transgressions, the benevolence of the communist state can't be denied.

Of the communist leaders. only a few have been given prison sentences.

They include Karel Hoffmann, sentenced in connection with the Soviet-led invasion in 1968, former Prague Communist official Miroslav Stepan, former interior minister Frantisek Kincl and former counter-intelligence head Karel Vykypel.

Still open is the case of Ludmila Brozova-Polednova, a prosecutor in the show trial in which democratic politician Milada Horakova was sentenced to death and executed in 1950.

Via ČeskéNoviny