AP News, December 18th, 2006
Romania's president presented a report Monday denouncing the former Communist regime as "criminal and illegitimate" and guilty of committing crimes against humanity _ the country's first such official condemnation.
President Traian Basescu, in presenting the 650-page report, accused the regime of gross violations of human rights. Romania ended 45 years of Communist rule with the 1989 overthrow and execution of its last dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu.
"The regime exterminated people by assassination and deportation of hundreds of thousands of people," Basescu said. "Behind the socialist humanism there was hidden the most profound contempt for people, for the individual."
Ultranationalist hecklers interrupted Basescu with jeers. Their leader, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, stood up and blew a whistle, showing the president a red "penalty" card, as in soccer. At one point, he paraded in front of Parliament with a banner showing Basescu in prison, shouting: "You vagabond!"
Basescu received the applause of some lawmakers, while others sat silent.
The officially commissioned report, which took eight months to complete, was drafted by a team led by University of Maryland professor Vladimir Tismaneanu.
It details Communist-era crimes, including the repression of dissidents and religious groups, censorship, banning abortion, starving the population, and confiscating or demolishing the homes of hundreds of thousands of people.
"The Communist regime was illegitimate and criminal. ... It treated an entire population as a group of guinea pigs for an experiment," Basescu said.
He added that the system was thrust upon Romania by the Soviet Union, which occupied the country in 1945. "It forced citizens live in lies and fear," he said.
"As the president, I condemn the Communist system ... and I state my admiration to the citizens who opposed the dictatorship."
Former Polish President and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, Bulgaria's former President Zhelyu Zhelev and Romania's King Michael, who was forced to abdicate by the Communists in 1947, attended the session.
Basescu backed the panel's recommendation to establish a national day commemorating victims of the Communist era as well as a museum of dictatorship and other efforts to educate people about it.
The report accuses some prominent current politicians, including former President Ion Iliescu, for contributing to the Communist regime.
It also names prominent journalists, writers and poets who, it said, indoctrinated Romanians. Tismaneanu's own late father, Leon Tismaneanu, also is mentioned for his writings in support of the Communist regime.
The initiative to set up a commission to look at the era mirrors a similar move by Iliescu, who set up an international panel of historians led by Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel to examine Romania's role in the Holocaust.
Iliescu criticized the report as a "revenge of Ceausescu's spirit," saying it was "demonizing the left."
Some commentators criticized the reporting as coming too late; others said it did not go far enough.
"We lived in Communism and we know what it was," journalist Corina Dragotescu said on Realitatea TV. "But this is something needed for future generations when they ask: "Why was Communism overthrown?'"
