crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
Ljubo Sirc *
Totalitarian features of the judiciary in the Republic
of Slovenia (1945–90): disregard for the rule of law
In The Economist Charlemagne quoted a European Foreign Minister: “We even question its
/Slovenia’s/ moral right to demand that neighbours like Serbia face up to their history; Slovenia is in
a ‘precarious position’ because it has ‘not admitted all the wrongs’ from its communist past, allowing
ex-apparatchiks to remain in positions of power after 1991.” 1
In Frankfurter Allgemeine Karl-Peter Schwarz wrote: “Personally as well as mentally, continuity
dominates. Thus far, the Slovene Parliament has not made up its mind to condemn communism …
Judges who used to pass political judgments continue to judge and journalists who approved of them,
continue writing leaders.” 2
Karl Popper wrote: “The first point is that you cannot make a free-market society from the top
down. What you can and what you should do under all circumstances, what every government has a
duty to do, is to try to establish the rule of law … Even Napoleon knew he had to establish a Code if
there was to be a free-market society.” 3
1. The description of facts
1.1. The list of mass-graves in Slovenia
There is now a comprehensive list of mass-graves in Slovenia enumerating the 571 mass graves
discovered and listed so far. The compilers are Prof Mitja Ferenc and Dr Jože Dežman, Director of the
Museum of Recent History, Ljubljana. There is also a Commission for the Rectification of Wrongs.
The number of victims (corpses) in each grave is not given. One of the highest figures is 15,000 in
a tank trench near Maribor. The total number is estimated to be between 150,000 and 200,000.
The nationalities of those murdered are also indicated.
The Croats are probably the most numerous, and made up of two categories: they all came to
Slovenia in 1945 trying to escape to the West from the communist-led National Liberation Army
(NLA). Some 40,000 must have been the Nazi-sponsored Croat fascists (Ustashe). In contrast some
100,000 would have been forcibly mobilised Croat soldiers, whose predominant loyalty was to the prewar
Croat Peasant Party leader, Vladko Maček. The Nazis put pressure on him in 1941 to become the
figurehead of newly founded Independent State of Croatia, but he refused and spent the war confined to
his farm. At the end of the war, Maček escaped to the West and died in the United States.
During the war, Maček’s associate Košutić tried to liase with the NLA, but the communist leaders
arrested him instead of trying to cooperate with the Croat Peasant Party in the struggle against the
Nazis.
The second group, found in the graves, are the so-called Slovene Home-guards. This group
was the result of the Liberation Front manoeuvres in Slovenia at the end of 1941 and the beginning
of 1942. The Liberation Front first proclaimed that nobody would be allowed to fight the occupiers
outside this Front and began killing persons who tried to organise other resistance groups. Later,
they even proclaimed the beginning of “class war” and started to attack villages, accusing the
peasants of being “kulaks”. Understandably, the peasants began defending themselves and
ended up under the protection of Germans who were less of a threat to them than the Communists.
* Ljubo Sirc, Centre for Research into Post-Communist Economies (CRCE), London, United Kingdom.
1
The Economist, 8 December 2007.
2
Frankfurter Allgemeine, 10 December 2007.
3
Karl Popper, The Lesson of this Century, Routledge, London–New York 1997, p. 31.
135