crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
is now being concluded. Out of 39,642 filed denationalization demands, 38,604, or 97.4 percent, were
legally concluded.
The Committee of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia for the Execution of the Law on
the Restitution of Injustices, led by Janez Lukač, has been active for more than ten years; but because of
Titophillic extremists’ activities, it remained very marginal for the first few years. During the mandate
of the government of Janez Janša, it was finally enabled to work effectively. The Committee has so far
resolved 18,696 applications. Instead of 858 applications per year, which was the Committee’s average
between 1997 and 2004, it resolved on average 4,731 applications per year between 2005 and 2008. 27
More than 2,000 people sentenced in political show trials have been rehabilitated. 28
6. Instead of a conclusion
Slovenian transcendence of the burdens of the past is intensively being developed in Slovenian
and international space, and has very strongly impacted the transitional processes in Slovenian society.
Under many criteria, Slovenia can be compared to, or even surpasses, many examples of various
committees and state interventions to transcend the burden of the criminal past (e.g. in South Africa,
South America, Spain …). 29 There is still a lot of work that we and many other European countries need
to do to transcend the burdens of the totalitarian 20 th century.
Footnotes in the tables
8
Tadeja Tominšek Rihtar, “List of names of victims of the Second World War and directly after it (1941–1946)”, in: Hitlerjeva dolga senca
(Hitler’s Long Shadow), Celovec 2007. The number of victims of Titoism is an estimation based on data on the number of killed unarmed
Slovenians and anti-communist unit members who fell fighting partisans, data on murdered prisoners of war and civilians after the War,
victims of show trials, members of the anti-communist movement killed in skirmishes and revenge actions and killed on the borders,
prisons and camps …
9
Statistical data of committees for uncovering crimes of the occupiers shows that the fatalities of war crimes (not including killed or
wounded partisans) in Slovenia number 35,488, and 32,747 persons were wounded, and 264,054 were interned or arrested, 332,289
in total. In Yugoslavia there were 505,182 casualties of war crimes, 384,089 were wounded and 1,750,032 were arrested and interned.
Zločini protiv čovečnosti i međunarodnog prava – Nirnberška presuda u dokumenti o genodicu, Belgrade 1992, p. 270.
10
Fugitives from the area that became Italian after the First World War, those persecuted during the Second World War, especially
inhabitants of the Ljubljana province (prisoners, the internees, exiles), those mobilized in the Italian Army.
11
Exiles, fugitives, prisoners, internees, forced and slave labourers, those forcibly mobilized into the Wehrmacht and paramilitary units.
12
Political emigration, escaped and exiled members of the German and Italian minorities, illegal refugees through the Iron Curtain to the
West before 1960, and in Slovenia or Yugoslavia, prisoners, internees, exiles, slave labourers. If we include racial discrimination against
the groups stigmatized by the regime (relatives of repressed victims, those forcibly mobilized into the occupiers’ armies, surviving
members of the anti-communist camp) and the class struggle (aristocracy, middle classes, farmers) and the war against religion and
church (especially church hierarchy and also many believers), there was no person remaining who had not experienced the red terror first
hand.
27
Attained goals of the Ministry of Justice in the mandate 2004–2008, online publication 22 July 2008 .
28
I would like to thank Marko Šorli from the Supreme Court for the estimate on the number of rehabilitations. Lovro Šturm reported at the
meeting in the State Council in November 2003 (Lovro Šturm, “Žrtve vojne in revolucije” (“Contribution to the discussion Victims of
War and the Revolution”), Ljubljana 2005, p.187.): “In Slovenia the state decided to use an individual approach, to change each unjust
sentence individually. So far this possibility /…/ was used by around three thousand people.”
29
Jože Dežman, Tranzicijska pravičnost. Poročilo Komisije Vlade RS za reševanje vprašanj prikritih grobišč (Transitional Justice. Report of
the Commission of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia for Solving the Question of Concealed Mass Graves), Ljubljana 2008.
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