Since the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, this greatest democratic political integration of our continent, has already on two occasions, in the resolutions from June 27, 1996 on the Measures to Dismantle the Heritage of Former Communist Totalitarian Systems, and January 25, 2006 on the Need for the International Condemnation of the Crimes of Totalitarian Communist Regimes,
– admonished that the international community has not brought the crimes of the communist regimes to trial, as was the case with the war crimes committed by National Socialism (Nazis);
– emphasized that the European public is neither sufficiently acquainted with or aware of these crimes,
– recommended prosecution and punishment, and the rehabilitation of those who were executed without trial and the innocent persons who were convicted, as well as restitutio in integrum to all the disenfranchised and persons who were robbed;
– insisted that the victims of communist terror “deserve sympathy, understanding and recognition for their sufferings”;
– and admonished that the condemnation of the crimes of communism is very important in the education of young generations;
since the Croatian Parliament on June 30, 2006, has adopted the Declaration on the Condemnation of Crimes Committed during the Totalitarian Communist Regime in Croatia, from 1945 to 1990;
and since the Slovenian Parliament has adopted the Military Cemeteries Act in 2003,
our three Justice and Peace Commissions consider our human, legal and moral duty to declare the following:

1. To disclose the truth about the victims and determine their identity. During the period at the end of the Second World War (after autumn 1944), in which the Communist Party and the partisan army assumed authority in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia, the communist regime carried out the systematic and massive repression of persons who were gratuitously called “enemies of the people and war criminals.” In this category of persons who were proscribed and condemned in advance, the regime did not count only military, political and clerical members of the various structures who had collaborated during the war with the totalitarian Axis powers and were opposed to the partisan movement, but also a large number of citizens who, according to various criteria such as world view, property ownership, political attitudes etc., were considered by the regime to be adversaries of the communist movement. After this regime seized individual areas, Croats endured particularly heavy casualties, but also members of other nations – in Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia and Vojvodina, and Slovenia, from the most severe forms of terror, without courts and trials and generally without any collective or individual evidence, in numerous places of executions, on death marches and in various camps,
Our commissions are of the opinion that it is equally unworthy and unacceptable to overestimate as it is to underestimate the significance and number of all these victims and that it is only justified to list them conscientiously, for which it is still not too late. Bearing in mind that the communist regime at that time systematically prepared, organized and perpetrated terror and repression against its own nations, as the so-called “second phase of the revolution,” and that at the head of this criminal undertaking stood the party-military and later the party-police leadership of the regime – as is indisputably testified to by Yugoslav and foreign documents – it is possible to “understand” the nature and extent of the crimes that were committed. Nonetheless, the fact should not be forgotten that the communist ideology had incorporated terror and crime from its very beginning.

2. Gravesites, victims and mourning. The extent of the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated at that time and the nature of the regime are most eloquently testified to by the large number of concealed and up to today unmarked gravesites in the territory of Slovenia, but also Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. These gravesites testify to the most heinous type of crime – systematic mass executions. During the past 17 years, approximately 1,300 such gravesites have been recorded and located, mostly in Croatia (over 700) and in Slovenia (over 500), among which the largest number of victims are probably in Kočevski rog, Tezno near Maribor, Maceljska šuma and Jazovka. It is estimated that these are only part of the concealed gravesites, where members of the defeated Croatian, Slovenian, Montenegrin and German armies, as well as numerous civilians, Croatians and other nationalities, were killed during the war, at the end of the war and during the first postwar year.
The mass gravesites were frequently later demolished, destroyed, transformed into garbage dumps (e.g., Husina jama near Sinj) or concealed in various ways, so that the victims and their graves simply “did not exist.” The families of the executed, if they knew or guessed where the gravesites were located, were not permitted to visit or mark them. Nonetheless, neither fear of the regime nor the passage of decades could suppress the memories of these victims for their family members, friends, frightened witnesses or even the perpetrators of the crimes.
Our commissions are of the opinion that it is necessary to identify all the concealed gravesites, mark them with suitable memorials and facilitate the conducting of funeral services of all faiths and expressions of piety toward the victims. In places where the remains of the victims have been scattered in unsuitable and inaccessible places, such as karstic caves, tank trenches, abandoned mines etc., the commissions are of the opinion that it is necessary to exhume the mortal remains of the victims, bury them in a dignified manner and, where possible, identify the victims at public expense. All of this should have the goal of making it possible for the families to mourn the losses of their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, which they could not experience due to uncertainty regarding the place and time of their executions, the conspiracy of silence about the crimes and the prohibition against even mentioning the murder victims.

3. Justice, silence and the truth. In this year of the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, which at the center of its civilized and humanistic proclamation places the principle that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and especially the inalienable right to life, liberty and security of person, it is necessary once again to confront the injustices and crimes of the totalitarian regimes and, therefore, the communist crimes and the repercussions of the communist past. Moreover, this should be done as soon as possible because in our countries the crimes of fascism and Nazism and their local allies have been investigated and documented, and the places of the suffering are known and marked, while nearly nothing of the sort has been done regarding the crimes of communism. On the contrary, their crimes have been systematically justified in public by antifascism. Such a presentation of one of the totalitarian ideologies and the concealment and justification of its crimes hinders democratic processes and reconciliation in these lands.

Therefore, the Justice and Peace Commissions of the Conferences of Bishops of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia desire during these days of the commemoration of all the suffering and marking of the places of execution and camps of the three totalitarian regimes, and thus the death marches and Bleiburg – as a sign of ideological hatred and unrecognized ethnic “investigations” – to declare that every person, even after death, is entitled to human dignity, which is a fundamental ethical principle. Therefore, in order to put an end to the defamation and silence regarding these unrecognized victims of the war and postwar period, and to make possible the right to public knowledge and piety, the commissions want to urge the institutions of the three countries to conduct objective and comprehensive investigations of these war crimes and crimes against humanity, in order to establish the historical facts and on the basis thereof to develop a pedagogy of reconciliation and forgiveness. The commissions are of the opinion that the institutions of the three countries should begin or continue the investigations of these victims and determine the facts of the crimes and their ideological and material perpetrators.

4. Crime, punishment and remembrance. According to the achievements of civilization and international law, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide do not have statutory limitations. Insofar as there is still criminal liability of the initiator, organizer and perpetrator of the crimes which in the “second phase of the revolution” deprived the nation of its leadership, destroyed the intelligentsia and all potential opponents and adversaries, there is similarly the liability of all those who in the structures of the three totalitarian regimes, based upon ideological hatred and the “right” to ethnic revenge, ordered and perpetrated such crimes. The commissions are of the opinion that heavy guilt is also borne by the leaders of the defeated regimes, who ordered the retreat of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians and then escaped themselves, abandoning the leaderless army and refugees to a fate that was, unfortunately, foreseen. Heavy guilt for the crimes also lies with the Allied, political and military leadership, who according to an agreement on returning the opposing armies to the country of their operations – conducted the forced repatriation of the fleeing soldiers and civilians, and they knew, or could have known, that turning them over would result in mass reprisals and executions, as well as the foreseeable continuation of the ideologically and nationalistically motivated partisan crimes, which began much earlier than prior to the end of the war.
Since up to the present, due to the concealment of the truth and the unpunished communist crimes, whether those of the political leaders, who ordered or tolerated the crimes, or those of the perpetrators, many facts and circumstances are still not known regarding the mass crimes, the commissions draw attention to the importance of the functioning of the legal states of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia, and respect for the national laws, resolutions of the Council of Europe and the adopted conventions of the United Nations on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity (1968) and on Genocide (1948). The Commissions, meanwhile, are of the opinion that in their countries, together with punishment of the criminals – which is still practiced in democratic countries such as France, Germany and the United States – first of all it is necessary to create the prerequisites for mourning and piety toward the victims, but also to uncover the mechanisms and liability for the crimes, i.e. to determine the historical facts and establish the collective memory of the nation.

5. The path of reconciliation and forgiveness. Due to everything that has been presented – the stake of civilization, the demands of international law and the conspiracy of silence about the crimes of only one of the three totalitarianisms that devastated our countries – and starting from the Christian duties of forgiveness and the need for reconciliation oriented not only to the purification of memory and personal peace but also the prevention of hatred and revenge, and the right to a grave and piety, the commissions wish to urge the perpetrators who are still alive and the witnesses to the crimes to testify about the victims, the places and the times, as well as the institutions, units and persons who ordered and committed crimes. The commissions recall the recent experiences of many commissions in the world (the Republic of South Africa, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, Northern Ireland etc.), who under the motto Truth and Reconciliation contributed to knowledge about historical truth and the achievement of civil reconciliation. In this sense, particularly for the purpose of the identification of gravesites and victims, the commissions propose that government authorities should initiate the procedure of abolition for truth and afford individual abolition to the initiators and perpetrators who provide facts about the liabilities, gravesites and times of the crimes and the identities of the victims.
In conclusion, our three commissions decisively condemn all three totalitarianisms and their ideologies, their idolatry of class, nation and race and all their crimes, as did many good people during that tragic time, many Catholics, laity, religious, priests and bishops, and particularly the archbishop of Zagreb, the Blessed Alojzije Stepinac; the bishop of Mostar, Alojzije Mišić; and the general vicar of the Ljubljana Diocese, Anton Vovk. The commissions note that purification of memory is a Christian duty, and they equally decisively condemn the crimes perpetrated by Catholics who – contrary to Christian principles and values – promoted, ordered or perpetrated crimes without statutory limitation against the life, freedom and dignity of others, those who were different – in the war, camps, places of execution and other places of the suffering of innocent people.

In Zagreb, May 13, 2008

Msgr. Vlado Košić, Ph.D.
President of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Croatian Conference of Bishops

Msgr. Anton Stres, Ph.D.
President of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Slovenian Conference of Bishops

Msgr. Pero Sudar, Ph.D.
President of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Conference of Bishops of Bosnia and Herzegovina