Budapest - On
January 21 - 22 representatives of fourteen
ex-communist countries met at the fourth Congress
of the International Association of Former
Political Prisoners and Victims of Communism.
"People's great hopes after
1989 were not fulfilled," said Karl -
Michael Vitt, the representative of Schiller
Institute from Germany. "These people who
fought for political freedom in East Europe are
forgotten by the Western institutions; they are
not helped to get their political rehabilitation.
The cultural values in nowadays West declined.
Their fight shows that all five billion of people
should live in freedom."
Zimanyi Tibor, president of
Recski Association: "We Hungarians have a
saying, how comes that the whole democratic
Germans gathered in East Germany and the whole
reactionary ones in West. It wasn't our decision
to stay behind the barbed wire. Now we knock at
Europe's door wanting to get in, but they are
still afraid of Moscow. They said at Jalta and
Posdam that the powerful countries won't try to
dominate the small countries, but it wasn't like
that."
Djuro Perica, Deputy President of
the Interior and National Security in the
Croatian parliament expects that the congress
would make West Europe understand what a
disastrous thing is communism. "In East
European countries the communism is popping up
again, under the form of socialism - actually a
'detergent - washed' communism," he said.
Jeno Fonay president of the
Hungarian Political Prisoners Association.
"I can't bear to see how they compromise.
They don't speak about our suffering. I can't be
at peace with our destiny. Ex-communists are just
looking without worrying in our eyes and nobody
is pointing at them. We have to make the past
known. When I watch TV I remember when after the
end of the war communism came and destroyed our
lives. Moscow trampled on the small countries'
people. If governments don't do anything about
it, we should."
In Hungary half of million people
got compensations for their material loss,
380,000 people lost their liberty organized in 23
organizations. "This is power's politics:
they make scission among us so that our voice
won't be heard," thinks Fonay. "We have
not the impact we should have had by now. The
media doesn't give a full picture though the
public is eager to know the truth: if media shows
those who suffered, the public deserves also to
see those who made people suffer."
Senator Constantin Ticu
Dumitrescu, president of the Former Political
Prisoners Association from Romania presented the
situation in Romania: " We had to fight
against the totalitarianism that hides behind the
'collective guilt'. They try to discourage us
through humiliation, slandering and
scission." Instead of making public the
security members and having them judged, as the
Germans did, they accuse former political
prisoners of being security staff.
"I'm not satisfied with what
I succeeded in doing up to now," said
Dumitrescu, "neither on national nor on
international level. Our Romanian association has
around 70 members, for they are still afraid to
register. Our material compensation are
insignificant - for one year of detention you are
given 4,000 lei - worth ten loaves of bread.
"We wanted to solve the
problems linked with the past out of love for
true. We want to fight against communism. You
can't build anything without truth, if we start
with lies we won't succeed to have a change.
Average people never saw the true face of
communism - the arrests were usually secret,
people were kidnapped. We need public trials to
unveil the communism, so that people should be
shaken. People still can't believe that communism
was so bad.
"I don't want revenge - even
the idea of punishment doesn't interest me - but
to have impact on the average men by making
public all documents of the past. It's
unimaginable for me that in the Romanian Senate I
sit on the same bench with senator David, the
commander of the security of Caras Severin
county. This is unjust, abnormal. This kind of
people should have had at least the common sense
to stay aside, not come to govern the country.
"The SRI (Romanian Security)
is publishing grossly falsified documents: they
say that in Romania were arrested only 35,000
people and 28,000 out of them were nazi. Actually
they arrested almost 2 million in 126 prisons and
concentration camps.
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35,000 people fill three
prisons, what were the rest for? We are around 100,000
survivors, so how comes if there were only 35,000
arrested ones?"
Balys Gajanskas - the president
of Lithuanian Union of Political Prisoners and
Deportees and Lithuanian parliament member - also
stressed that" Historic truth must be
restored. In Lithuania occupants fabricated
historical facts, the occupancy was glorified and
the resistance was slandered. Our country
inherited the major part of KGB archives. It is
very important that these documents could not be
used for the falsification of the Lithuanian
history. The communist parties should be put on
an international trial - a second
Nuremberg."
Evguen Pronyuk, parliamentarian,
head of Ukrainian delegation reminded that:
"The bones of our fathers lie all over
Siberia, Vorkuta, Kazakstan. Half of our
countrymen, 50 million, died fighting against
Moscow. We ask for an international trial, a
Nuremberg II. Communism should be outlawed. Our
countries besides communism felt the effects of
Russian imperialism, for more than 800 years. It
is our duty who know the price of fight for
freedom to raise our voice in behalf of Cecen
people against this genocide."
Some of the decisions of the
Congress summarize the speeches. Communism should
be outlawed all over the world as fascism was.
The European Community should take note of our
opinion. We would make the necessary approach
that our association would be accepted as member
of the European Community. In all countries
research should start for the registration of
victims of communism, places where they had been
tortured and buried.
"Communists shouldn't think
that they will win," warned Istvan
Fehervary, president of the Political Prisoners
Society. "Brothers of destiny, all the
10,000 people who died in 1956 didn't die just
for our freedom but also for yours. Thousands of
people are backing us in the memory of their
parents deaths and suffering. We know that
thousands of people are buried in unknown tombs.
"We should tell the world
our truth. Not only to the school children but
also to the poor old peasant whom the bolshevism
crushed into misery. Here it was a Potemkin
theaterof smiling bolshevism with armies of
smiling children. Meanwhile backstage behind the
iron curtain the hundreds of thousands of
humiliated, calumniated, marched day by day that
kept on their back Soviet Union with their slave
work."
According to Vitt the heritage of
communism were high debts to the International
Monetary Fund. It would have been very easy for
the Western governments to have a debt moratorium
after 1989 and the money should have been used to
rebuild the countries. "But Western
countries didn't really support these
governments. That's why communism is coming back
now and the East European countries are in a
break down."
"When it's such a poverty in
our countries," said Slovakian
representative Vincent Samuely, "a new
prophet can easily gain popularity by preaching a
new life. We have to make sure that communism
should never come back."
The former political prisoners,
living ghosts of communism's haunted past who
were not afraid to say what they believed in,
were moving slowly, lowering their white heads
attentively. Their smiles were so warm, their
passionate speeches, grand words from the mouth's
of any others, were not bombastic, because they
were backed up by truth.
"In Albanian prisons, the
leaders of the communist party are living like in
a comfortable hotel," said Dr. Thoma Dardeli
Albanian representative. "Not like us with
only a blanket on a concrete floor, and a pot for
piss inside the cell. Now they have normal beds,
TV, library, parquet. They can meet journalists.
This was unimaginable in our days. The press is
full of their lies everyday, they think "We
lie, maybe they will believe some of it."
Their lives were withered, made
excruciating in prisons. And here, they told
their stories voiced in frustration and anger:
"they don't pay any attention to us. They
behave as if wanting the time pass so that death
would finish us one by one. We can't gain our
rights for we are old and weakened by suffering.
Our martyrs can't cry but through us. How is it
possible not to punish the murderers, the
communists, that walk around free, while a
fascist discovered after fifty years in Brazil,
is fast condemned. Time makes men forget, but we
can't be at peace with our destiny."
They were touched when they
listened one speech saying "Human solidarity
can't be defeated. Maybe force can win, but just
for a while. Be happy with your encounter, open
your hearts and love life!"
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