Last week the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) decisively moved forward on “measures to dismantle the heritage of the former communist totalitarian regimes”. The move was bound to provoke protest.
In Resolution 1481 the Assembly specifically focused on the former totalitarian communist regimes of central and Eastern Europe as, without exception, massively violating human rights. These violations have included assassination, executions, deaths in concentration camps, starvation, deportations, torture, slave labour, ethnic and religious persecution, the suppressing of civil liberties, and more.
The Assembly sees the crimes as being committed in the name of class struggle which legitimized the elimination of people. The USSR’s victims vastly outnumbered those of other regimes.
In the resolution the Assembly pointedly refers to the lack of international investigations of former communist regimes and the ensuing possible prosecutions at international tribunals of the authors of the crimes. It noted that justice was rendered in the case of the Nazis.
Consequently, crimes of communist regimes do not have requisite public awareness. In many countries, (including Canada), communist parties enjoy full political rights even though they have not distanced themselves from the atrocities of communist regimes of the past. In some countries they form a totalitarian government and continue to commit crimes.
The Assembly insists that the world community has a moral obligation to take a stand on the issue without delay – to condemn massive human rights violations currently committed by totalitarian communist states and for all former communist states to reassess the history of communism and to condemn the crimes without ambiguity.
The resolution was bound to elicit reaction. Estonia’s Left Party immediately stressed the necessity to target individuals involved, not crimes of communism. Stating that the Left Party holds the continuity of the old Estonian Communist Party, the latter, in 1990, admitted to its mistakes of the past and that certain individuals should be held accountable, not the party.
The European Left Party complained that equating communism with Nazism is insulting. One should condemn Stalinism as the perpetrator of red terror.
PACE member Andres Herkel insisted that communists with clear consciences should not fret over the resolution. Obviously some communists suffer from lingering feelings of guilt, otherwise they wouldn’t protest so passionately, he said.
Herkel stated that the resolution was a landmark rendering Estonian history more understandable internationally and those that lived through communist repressions might be encouraged that justice eventually will prevail.
Founded in 1949 and headquartered in Strasbourg, the Council of Europe is the continent’s oldest political organization with 46 member countries, 21 from central and eastern Europe (currently excluding Belarus). All new European Union member states were already Council of Europe members.
The Council was set up to defend human rights, parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. It acts as a political anchor and human rights watchdog for Europe’s post-communist democracies, assisting in political, educational, legal and constitutional reform and provides know-how in these areas and the environment.