RESPONSIBILITY FOR MURDERS REMAINS UNRESOLVED
Crimes of Slovenian communists in the years following 1945 are still
unaccounted for.
By Karl Peter Schwarz [Notes added in translation are underlined]
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 30 July 2007
Kranj, Slovenia, July 2007. =E2=80=9CYugoslav communism,=E2=80=9D says
Ljub=
o Sirc
=E2=80=9Cwas
no less communistic than Soviet communism or any other communism for
that matter. In 1947, Sirc, now 87, was sentenced to death at a
political show trial in Ljubljana.
The leftist fairy tales would have it that Tito=E2=80=99s partisans
=E2=80=9Cliberated=E2=80=9D Yugoslavia from the German occupation but in
re=
ality they
only substituted another Dictator****p for Nazism that was much more
pernicious and enduring.
Tito=E2=80=99s socialism is still thought of today as being benign
although
the outcome of the reign of terror in Slovenia relative to its
population hardly differs from the Great Terror of Stalin=E2=80=99s era.
According to Sirc=E2=80=99s conservative *****sment, between 200,000 to
300,000 Yugoslavs were murdered between 1945 and 1950 in the
communist
campaign to consolidate their power by systematic operations
conducted
by the political police, that is, every eighth inhabitant of the
country died as a victim of communist terror.
The uncaring West rewarded Tito=E2=80=99s break with Stalin at the onset
of
the cold war by massive injections of foreign aid and by overlooking
or even accepting his crimes.
While Ljubo Sirc was serving his 15 year sentence in Yugoslavia,
Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of the American president in her paper
=E2=80=9CMy
Day=E2=80=9D wrote effusively about the =E2=80=9Chumanistic dictator****p
of=
the
proletariat, called communism =E2=80=9Cthe only hope for Yugoslavia=E2=80=
=9D and
declared Tito=E2=80=99s success because he always was true to the
people=E2=
=80=A6=E2=80=9D
As the Yugoslav workers=E2=80=99 councils resulted in a complete chaos
Western
governments hastened to inject further massive assistance into Tito=E2=80=
=99s
economy.
During the communist dictator****p Ljubo Sirc became established as
lecturer on World economics in Scottish Glasgow. It was there that at
the end of the sixtieth he was told after an exchange with leftist
intellectuals that he deserved the death sentence as he clearly did
not believe in communism.
His native Slovenia is today considered as an exemplary fledgling
democracy in the post-communist Europe. In that small, not much
bigger
that 200,000 square kilometers European Union member with some 2
million inhabitants 512 mass graves containing thousands of victims
of
communist terror have been discovered. Time and again excavations
needed for construction work uncover new skeletons of the victims of
the communists. Not a single person has ever been held accountable
for
those murders.
The Slovenian communists who are today calling themselves the
=E2=80=9Cliberal
Democracy of Slovenia and the Social Democrats have since the
separation from the Yugoslav federation in 1992 up to the electoral
victory of the conservative parties in 2004 remained in power.
Communists were particularly strong in the economic and financial
affairs, in the media, universities and, above all, in the judiciary.
Of the nine justices of Slovenia=E2=80=99s Constitutional Court appointed
by
the former president Milan Kur=C4=8Dan, Slovenia=E2=80=99s communist party
=
boss,
eight are known communists. One of them is Ciril Ribi=C4=8Di=C4=8D, the
last
titular chairman of the communist party, a virulent communist bearing
the partisan=E2=80=99s alias of his father, Moscow trained Comrade High
Executioner Mitja Ribi=C4=8Di=C4=8D.
In 2006 a court in Ljubljana blocked prosecution of the indictment
brought against Mitja Ribi=C4=8Di=C4=8D who was since the end of the war
in
1945
acting chief of Section 2 of the communist political police OZNA in
which capacity he organized the campaign against the =E2=80=9Cinternal
enem=
y=E2=80=9D
and directed summary executions of actual and suspected enemies of
the
regime.
Part of the public prosecutor=E2=80=99s evidence shows that
=E2=80=9Ccolone=
l Mitja
[Ribi=C4=8Di=C4=8D] issued a written orders for the execution of 270
suppos=
ed
=E2=80=9CNazi collaborators.=E2=80=9D The court inexplicably blocked
prosec=
ution
being
reluctant to proceed against a prominent Slovenian politician.
Ribi=C4=8Di=C4=8D, who loves dogs and writes poetry, had under Tito at the
=
end
of the sixtieth become Yugoslav prime minister and later president of
the federal central committee of the communist party.
Ljubo Sirc has known Ribi=C4=8Di=C4=8D since the sixties. Shortly before
midnight on the eve of Tito=E2=80=99s birthday on 24 May 1947 Sirc was
arrested on his way home by the communist political police and
interrogated in the former psychiatric department of Ljubljana=E2=80=99s
hospital, previously used by the Gestapo for similar purposes by
Ribi=C4=8Di=C4=8D and his men. For four weeks he was nightly dragged from
h=
is
cell to the interrogation while he was not allowed to sleep during
the
day.
The political police officer and his victims are approximately of the
same age.
Ribi=C4=8Di=C4=8D was born in Trieste in 1919, Sirc in Kranj in 1920. Both
enrolled in the law school at the university in Ljubljana in 1938.
When Germany invaded Yugoslavia Sirc joined the leftist resistance
group Stara Pravda [Ancient Rights]. The Slovenian communists
discovered their patriotism only two months after the German invasion
when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.
As a youth Ribi=C4=8Di=C4=8D was expelled from the patriotic gymnast
organization Sokol because of his mordant personality and active
sup****t of communist subversives. Ribi=C4=8Di=C4=8D acted as a political
commissar in the rank of a colonel in a partisan detachment in the
northeast Slovenia [Lower Styria] occupied by Germany. He says his
most im****tant task was ensuring that non-communists did not
infiltrate the resistance movement. Volunteering would-be partisans
were subjected to strenuous interrogation and those found unreliable
were personally clubbed to death by Ribi=C4=8Di=C4=8D.
The Protective order of the so-called Slovenian People=E2=80=99s
Liberation
Front of September 1941 provided for the liquidation of those members
of the resistance who did not sup****t the communist control of the
so-
called People=E2=80=99s Liberation Front movement.
The Antifascists of Stara Pravda were expelled from the so-called
Liberation Front. Sirc escaped to Switzerland in the futile hope that
he would be able to warn the allies about the communist plans. As
Tito
under pressure of the Allies appeared to reach an agreement with the
Royal Yugoslav government Sirc returned to occupied Yugoslavia and
joined the liberation army expecting that the British, Americans
would
sup****t =C5=A0uba=C5=A1i=C4=8D but he was deceived.
Contacts which Sirc maintained with foreigners as translator for the
Yugoslav government were held against him in the political show
trial.
Of fourteen defendants three were sentenced to death. [Note] One
death
sentence, that of Dr. =C4=8Crtomir Nagode, was carried out. Nagode was
executed in a savagely barbarous way whereby he was first shot into
his legs so that he collapsed and then gradually shot to death, the
Slovenian government to this day refuses to disclose where he is
buried lest forensic evidence corroborate the savagery of its
executioners. [End Note]. To ten years imprisonment at hard labor was
also sentenced Ljubo Sirc=E2=80=99s father Ftranjo Sirc who had no
connecti=
on
with Ljubo=E2=80=99s endeavors to organize a democratic opposition. Franjo
Sirc died after four years of imprisonment. He was sentenced because
his son was an =E2=80=9Cenemy of the people=E2=80=9D and he himself a =E2=
=80=9Cclass enemy.=E2=80=9D
Franjo Sirc was a successful entrepreneur who was robbed of his
property by the Nazis and had his textile factory machines and
equipment seized. What was left by the Nazis was confiscated by the
communists. [Jo=C5=BEe =C5=BDontar: Kaznovana Podjetnost, Nova Revija,
Ljubljana
2005]
Ljubo Sirc remained in prison for seven years and a half. In 1955 he
succeeded in escaping over the snow covered mountains to Italy. He
taught economics in Dacca, in Dundee and in Glasgow and founded the
renowned Center for Research into Post-communist Economies in London
associated with Margaret Thatcher=E2=80=99s Policy Institute. He has
written
several books on the subject as well as his biography =E2=80=9CBetween
Hitl=
er
and Tito=E2=80=9D [Andre Deutsch 1989, London] an authentic description of
life in Yugoslavia in those times.
Sirc has been endeavoring to recover his property for more than 20
years. This, he says, he owes to his father. The sentence of the
political show trial was rescinded in 1991. He also claimed
compensation for unjust imprisonment. He did recover a few scattered
pieces of his family=E2=80=99s personal property consisting of a house in
Kranj, with the exception of the business premises on the ground
floor, part of the garden and 600 out of 1,500 square meters of land
belonging to his father=E2=80=99s textile factory.
In 1990 the Slovenian parliament decided to return all confiscated
properties, if this should not be possible corresponding compensation
based on past valuation would be paid.
The restitution of property however is being slowed down and is made
only partially. Sirc had to appeal adverse decisions three times.
Eventually he filed a complaint in the European Court of Human Rights
in Strassburg. It took eight years before the ECHR before the
Strassburg court issued a decision and that was not on the merits on
the property restitution claim but only an imposition of an 18,000
Euro fine for dilatory handling of the claim where the value of the
property involved amounts to over 10 Million Euro.
During the process the Slovenian leftist parties which regained power
after a brief interlude modified retroactively the property
restitution law to the detriment of the claimants, to be sure. The
rationale given by the Slovenian courts was that the fiscal
exigencies
of a social state are more im****tant than an individual=E2=80=99s property
rights. At this time over 40 percent of the property in Slovenia is
still owned by the government.
Sirc v. Slovenia was supposed to be a test case in the Strassburg
court. As already mentioned that court took eight years to decide the
case. Bo=C5=A1tjan Zupan=C4=8Di=C4=8D, Slovenia=E2=80=99s communist
thinkin=
g judge in
Strassburg criticized the ECHR in the Ljubljana communist daily
=E2=80=9CDelo.=E2=80=9D
=E2=80=9CThe chasm between Western and Eastern thinking by which the ECHR
is
characterized where bourgeois mentality still prevails and manifests
itself in the yuppie resolution of cases.=E2=80=9D Instead of the
=E2=80=9C=
legal
formalism,=E2=80=9D the judges should, according to communist
Zupan=C4=8Di=
=C4=8D,
exercise their power of judicial activism and legislate from the
bench
in promoting the socialist agenda.
Sirc, as well as Alexandra Mareschi, Secretary General of the
International League of theVictims of Power in Cologne tried to take
these outrageous statements up with Lucius Wildhaber, a Swiss who was
until 2006 the court=E2=80=99s spineless presiding judge. As could be
expected
from someone like Wildhaber, he was totally insensitive to the issue
and replied that he had a =E2=80=9Cchat=E2=80=9D with Zupan=C4=8Di=C4=8D
wh=
o had mendatiously
=E2=80=9Cexplained=E2=80=9D to him that he was incorrectly quoted by the
Sl=
ovenian
press which Wildhaber believed and was pleased to respond that he
would not act in the matter. Earlier, in his former capacity as judge
of the Slovenian Constitutional Court =C5=BDupan=C4=8Di=C4=8D voted
agains=
t the
majority opinion which held that the Law on Confiscation of Property
and Execution of Confiscation was not in accord with the legal
precept
recognized by civilized nations.
Sirc accuses the Slovenian Constitutional Court as well as the ECHR
panel (Third Section) to which his case was assigned of being partial
and prejudiced against him. The matter is the Courts=E2=80=99 crass
disrega=
rd
of his human rights, specifically the right to own and enjoy his
property. He has the right to have his case heard by an impartial
tribunal which ECHR with its senseless if not downright pernicious
ratione tem****is policy demonstrably is not.
The European Parliament should mandate that the Court discontinue its
practice of upholding the communist confiscations in Eastern Europe
and systematic disregard and contempt of the reorganized communist
governments for property rights which are the basis of all other
human
rights if it is to serve any useful purpose.
The Slovenian communists now reorganized in two successor parties
have
joined the Liberal International and the Socialist International.
Whether the Liberals and Social Democrats still retain an
understanding of justice and the concept of property which they once
possessed is a question that must now be asked.
In the West, says Sirc, can still be found plenty of people whom the
communists can use as =E2=80=9Cuseful idiots=E2=80=9D =E2=80=93 a
character=
ization eminently
applicable to the justices of the ECHR.
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