European Public Hearing on Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes

Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes are reports and proceedings of the European public hearing organised by the Slovenian Presidency [1] of the Council of the European Union (January–June 2008) and the European Commission.[2] The Hearing was organised in response to the request made by the Justice and Home Affairs Council of the European Union on 19 April 2007.

The president of the EU Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso and the Slovenian Prime Minister, Janez Janša, in 2007.

Edited by Peter Jambrek[3] and published by the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union Crimes, the reports and proceedings research and investigate gross and large scale human rights violations committed during the reign of totalitarian regimes in Europe.

There were four sessions at the Hearing:

The preface was written by the Slovenian Minister of Justice Lovro Šturm, and the introduction by Jacques Barrot, Vice-President of the European Commission for Justice, Freedom and Security. Countries that were involved were: Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia, Poland and Spain.

Topics and chapters

I. HISTORY, CHARACTERISTICS AND CLASSIFICATION OF TOTALITARIAN REGIMES

II. TOTALITARIAN CRIMES: CROSS-NATIONAL SURVEY

III. TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE: PROSECUTION AND REDRESS Of INJUSTICE

IV. REMEMBRANCE, RECOGNITION AND PUBLIC AWARENESS Of TOTALITARIAN

V. RECONCILIATION: ON HANDLING THE TRAUMATIC PAST

Totalitarian machines

The report stated the following about Totalitarian machines:

Let us mention briefly Fascism, National Socialism and Titoism in Italy, Austria and Slovenia. Three Christian nations, with nationalist tendencies, were infected with totalitarianism. The descent into barbarism has comparable structural elements:
  • Abuse of national sentiment to carry out racial and class revolutionary projects;
  • Cult of a great leader,[5] who permits his fanatics to murder, steal and lie;
  • Dictatorship of one party;
  • Militarisation of society, police state – almighty secret political police;
  • Collectivism, subjection of the citizen to the totalitarian state;
  • State terrorism with systematic abuses of basic human rights;
  • Aggressive assumption of power and struggle for territory.

Remembrance day

The European Parliament has proposed August 23 as a common remembrance day of the victims of totalitarian regimes.

See also

References

  1. ↑ European Public Hearing on "Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes" Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union (January–June 2008) and the European Commission
  2. ↑ EUROPA EU. Press Releases-Brussels
  3. ↑ Council of Europe-Parliamentary Assembly
  4. ↑ Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy by Carl Joachim Friedrich & Zbigniew Brzezinski.
  5. ↑ Discontents: Post-modern and Post communist' by Paul Hollander:
    • Virtually every communist system extinct or surviving at one point or another had a supreme leader who was both extraordinarily powerful and surrounded by a bizarre cult, indeed worship. In the past (or in a more traditional contemporary societies) such as cults were reserved for deities and associated with conventional religious behaviour and institutions. These cults although apparently an intrinsic part of communist dictatorships (at any rate at a stage in their evolution) are largely forgotten today." " Stalin, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Sung, Enver Hoxha, Ceascesu, Dimitrov, Ulbricht, Gottwald, Josip Broz Tito and others all were the object of such cults. The prototypical cult was that of Stalin which was duplicated elsewhere with minor variations. Paul Hollander Ph.D in Sociology. Princeton University, 1963, B.A. London School of Economics, 1959 Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Center Associate, Davis Center.

External links