With the aim of remembering the
crimes committed under communism and projecting a view of the present and
future of communism, the Center for
Studies, Training and Social Analysis (CEU-CEFAS) and the CEU Institute of Historical Studies
have organised the International
Congress of Victims of Communism 'Voices for Freedom', to analyse the role
of this ideology throughout history.
During the opening, professor Ken Pope, CEO of the Victims of
Communism Memorial Foundation (USA), recalled in his lecture '100 Million
Murdered: The Importance of Memory in the Fight Against Communism' that "communism has caused the death of 100
million people worldwide, 65 from China and 2 million from Cambodia (25% of the
population), among others".
Pope pointed out that the key to
understanding communism lies in education. "This ideology is deeply rooted in youth and is not taught well or
thoroughly to new generations, which is why Marx is perceived as a visionary,
interpreted incorrectly. To eradicate this, it is necessary to remember all the
problems it has caused and to teach it in school." He also emphasised
that this system is not academically condemned as it should be, "in social and civic studies, communism is
talked about in a very general way, not about its real implications".
Regarding the cultural battle currently
taking place, and not only in the field of education, he remarked that "communism, the first thing it tries to do is
to kill God and then the family, and to eradicate both aspects of people's
lives. They want to destroy the concept of family and make the state provide
everything for them". However, he stated, "the State can give you everything, but it can also take it away from
you".
Over the two-day congress, participants
reflected on the different countries that have suffered and continue to suffer
under these regimes: China; the reconstruction of the countries that were under
the domination of the USSR; the first cracks in the Wall: Yugoslavia, Hungary
and Poland; or the far-left in Latin America: Argentina, Cuba and Venezuela.
Testimonies were also heard from relatives of victims from the different
communist countries.
Regarding China, dissident journalist
Yuan Lee addressed the threat to
human rights posed by the Asian country. "Communism is taking away our human dignity. The loss of human rights in
China affects us all," he emphasised. During his speech, he wanted to
raise awareness among attendees of the power of the Chinese Communist regime
worldwide and stressed the importance of the media reporting what is happening,
since "to stop communism, we have to
understand it."
Communist
whitewashing
With respect to the current
situation, during a second day, the speakers agreed on the fact that there is a
whitewashing of this ideology. Joanna Rak, professor of Political
Culture at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (Poland), stressed that
"anti-democrats have found channels to interfere in political
structures and we have to protect ourselves against this". Renato
Cristin, professor of Philosophical Hermeneutics at the University of
Trieste (Italy) and promoter of the 'Nuremberg Trial for Communism' appeal,
pointed out that "communism is not dead either as an ideology or as a
form of state, although it differs from previous regimes" and insisted
that "whitewashing is a practice that communist regimes have always used
to eliminate people or erase facts".
The president of SalL (Portugal), Alfonso Texeira, emphasised that
"almost all offences to our
fundamental freedoms: opinion, thought, religion, education, etc., have their
origins in the communist environment in which we live. Communists are still trying
to impose their revolution, now feminist, ecological, anti-religious and
anti-Western tradition." This ideology "seeks to destroy the common sense of the Western society", he
concluded. Finally, Hermann Tertsch,
president of the Ibero-American ECR Group in the European Parliament and MEP
(VOX), highlighted that "communists
want to do away with concepts that have kept us and identified us as a
civilisation" and added that "natural
law as a concept is the only real equality that we should hold sacred and it is
the first one that they have undermined".
Alfonso
Bullón de Mendoza, president of the ACdP; Elio A. Gallego, director of
CEU-CEFAS, and José Luis Orella, director of the CEU Chair of History, Memory
and Identity, also took part in the opening ceremony, agreeing that it is
necessary to remember the crimes committed under communist regimes in order to
have a projection for the present and the future.