crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

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Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes This code no longer included certain criminal acts that had existed in the criminal legislation, and it also did not include certain of the severest sentences. The abolishment of the harshest forms of repression was followed by certain other more liberal political changes, which, however, the Communist Party (the League of Communists from 1952 on) was ready to implement only to the extent that it did not threaten its power monopoly. However, as soon as it began to feel threatened, it banned the liberalisation policy and got back to the old, well-worn patterns. So from the ‘50s until the fall of Communism, periods of liberal changes were always followed by a fresh enforcement of “iron rule” in Slovenia. Nevertheless, since the beginning of the ‘50s, repression in Slovenia never again reached the past level. Here the question arises of why the Yugoslav or Slovenian Communists decided to abolish some of the most typical Stalinist methods at the beginning of the ‘50s at all. The reasons for these changes did not lie in a sudden awareness of how amiss such methods were or in their readiness to relinquish them forever. They were in fact forced to make certain liberal changes, also reflected in the abolishment of the most brutal repressive measures, by the difficult international situation in which Yugoslavia found itself at the end of the ‘40s and the beginning of the ‘50s. At that time, the Yugoslav Communist leadership became involved in a difficult conflict with Stalin’s Soviet Union and its satellites – the dispute with the Informbiro. Because it felt greatly threatened, the Yugoslav Communist leadership was forced into contact with the West and asked the West for economic and military aid, which was provided. It is assumed that the Western countries imposed conditions for providing economic and military aid to Yugoslavia, demanding that its leadership renounce some of the most acutely repressive measures. This condition was not excessively demanding for the Yugoslav Communists, because during that time the further use of some former means of repression was no longer necessary. For strategic reasons, the West did not want Yugoslavia to be subordinated to Moscow, so it was willing to provide aid when it was no longer threatened by military aggression after Stalin’s death in 1953. The purpose of this help was to maintain, at any price, the necessary economic and political stability in Yugoslavia, which was expressed in the slogan of the American diplomats as “keeping Tito afloat”. The great economic assistance that Yugoslavia was receiving from the West until Tito’s death in 1980 and afterwards the raising of enormous loans enabled Yugoslavia to keep its social standard at a much higher level than in countries with so-called “real socialism”. This in turn also ensured social peace. Under such conditions, there was indeed no need for greater use of repression. This, however, did not mean that the Communist regime was not ready to use it again if it believed it was necessary. Yugoslavia, and consequently Slovenia, remained a totalitarian state, despite certain liberal changes, until the fall of Communism. The main support structure of Communist rule remained its political secret police. Until March 1946, this was the Department for Protection of the Nation (OZNA), followed by UDBA (State Security Administration) until 1967 and the State Security Agency (SDV) after 1967. The secret police took care that the “interior enemies” were constantly under control and that due sanctions were taken against them in a timely manner. The secret police let the judicial authorities deal with them, from time to time carrying out political and show trials against the most dangerous of them. One victim of such a trial was the most important Slovenian dissident, Dr Jože Pučnik, later a leader of the Democratic Opposition of Slovenia (DEMOS). To deal with the most dangerous opponents, the Communist authorities were also ready to use military courts, as was the case in 1988 in the “trial against the four” in Ljubljana, in which J. Janša, I. Borštner, F. Zavrl and D. Tasič (the JBTZ Affair) were condemned for their “hostile activities”. In the case of a so-called emergency situation, the Communist regime in Slovenia planned the establishment of concentration camps for imprisonment of its most dangerous enemies. A recently discovered document shows that during the 1967–68 period, they specifically planned the establishment of four concentration camps, where around 1000 persons would be interned for political reasons, among them 100 women. 1 2. Survey of some of the most typical forms of communist repression in Slovenia in the period 1945–51 As was already mentioned, the Communist authorities in Slovenia, in the period from the end of war in 1945 until the beginning of the 1950s, instituted certain forms of repression against the “interior enemies” that were typical of states with Stalinist regimes, such as: 1 The document was discovered in the archives of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Slovenia in 2007. 162
Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes – Mass killings without court trials; – Establishing concentration camps; – Establishing labour camps; – Forced deprivations of liberty; – Implementing political and show trials; – Deportations of inhabitants from the state and their place residence; – Determining place of residence; – Suppression of religion and persecution of the Church and clergy. 3. Mass killings without court trials The Communist repression in Slovenia reached its peak in the first months after the war ended in 1945 with the carrying out of mass killings without court trials of so-called “national enemies”. As already implied in the term “killings without a court trial”, these were killings carried out without any proceedings before a court and without establishing the guilt of the individual victims. The victims of killings without a court trial were killed only due to their status, because for the victorious Communist Party in the civil war they represented the “national enemies” with whom the Communist regime decided to settle accounts once and for all. This happened despite the fact that military courts existed in those times in Slovenia that could judge alleged perpetrators of war crimes and other criminal acts in accordance with the provisions of the Regulation on Military Courts of the Supreme Headquarters of the National Liberation Army and POJ (Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia – PDY) of 24 May 1944. According to this regulation, which was still applicable during those times, only military courts were competent to issue death sentences. By implementing killings without a court trial, the Slovenian Communist authorities also grossly violated their own regulations on criminal justice. One of the central issues raised in this context is the question of who adopted, and when, the decisions on implementation of the mass killings that occurred in Slovenia after the war. On 14 May, Supreme Commander Josip Broz - Tito sent a telegram to all his subordinate headquarters saying that the killing of prisoners should be stopped and that the Geneva Convention should be respected. 2 The Main Headquarters of the Yugoslav Army had already called attention to respecting the Geneva Convention on 3 May in its order on the treatment of prisoners of war. 3 However, despite this injunction, both prisoners of war and civilians were killed massively at the end of May and in the first half of June 1945 in Slovenia. Tito’s telegram on respecting the Geneva Convention was later revoked; however, it could only be revoked by the person who issued it in the first place, i.e. Tito himself. He could probably not have taken such an important decision alone, as it had to be adopted by the core party leadership, i.e. the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Because it also consisted of representatives of the Communist Party of Slovenia, the responsibility for such a decision also lay with its leadership. The most frequently given reason for its adoption was the straining of relations between Yugoslavia and the Western allies, resulting from the Yugoslav military occupation of Trieste. Because there existed the possibility of armed conflict with the British and Americans, the captured adversaries supposedly represented a great interior threat to Yugoslav Communist rule, and therefore the regime decided to liquidate them. This liquidation was entrusted to the Department for Protection of the Nation (OZNA), which was established on 13 May 1944 under the model of the Soviet NKVD. The OZNA was not only a military intelligence service, but at the same time also represented the political secret police of the Communist Party. The OZNA carried out mass killings without court trials with the help of members of the National Defence Corps (KNOJ). The killings without a trial were most massive in the first months after the war in 1945 and continued until the beginning of 1946. How extensive these killings were is illustrated by the fact that 581 hidden graves of victims of post-war killings without a court trial have thus far been found in the territory of Slovenia. The figure will undoubtedly increase considerably given that the recording of hidden graves has not yet been concluded. These are mostly graves in which a large number of victims (in some cases even several thousand) were buried. For these mass killings, anti-tank trenches (near 2 Bakarić warned Tito that the things were getting out of control, Jutarnji list, 27 October 2007. 3 Ibid. 163
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TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE Lovro Št
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IV. REMEMBRANCE, RECOGNITION AND PU
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crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

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