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| Europe | |
| History calls | |
| 2006-01-26 | |
However, in a vote that was bitterly contested by Russia and Western Europe’s left-wing parties, the 46-nation council failed to raise the two-thirds majority needed to approve a tougher resolution by a Swedish MP that called on former communist states to teach the truth about their former regimes and create days of remembrance. The council assembly, which includes MPs from all former European communist states except Belarus, voted by simple majority for a motion deploring that there had never been an international inquiry on the “crimes committed in these states”. “These have never been condemned by the international community as have been the horrible crimes committed in the name of (German) National Socialism”, said Göran Lindblad, a Swedish conservative MP. The failure to win the broader motion underlined the misgivings among parliamentarians over the wisdom of revisiting painful history and issuing blanket condemnations. The council was founded after the Second World War to protect human rights and the rule of law. The case made by conservatives for putting Stalin on a par with Hitler has fuelled a furious dispute in recent years in France, Greece and other Western European states where Marxist doctrines and communist parties enjoy strong sympathies. A Russian opinion poll last month suggested that 42 per cent of Russians believed that Stalin had played a positive role in their country. MPs from Hungary, Estonia, Bulgaria and other former Soviet satellite states gave emotional backing to the vote. Russian MPs relayed the anger in Moscow over what is seen as a hostile act aimed at isolating their country and opening the way to lawsuits. Natalia Narochnitskaya, deputy chief of the Duma’s foreign affairs committee, said that Europe should be denouncing the terror of the French Revolution. She added: “Oliver Cromwell has never been denounced.” Sounds like someone is angling for the chairmanship of the European Commission on Cromwell Denunciation. There is a tally of all the various categories of victims of modern European ideologies at the end of the article. | |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #6 Thx, ryuge! |
| Posted by: .com 2006-01-26 15:00 |
| #5 Sorry! Here's the link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2010125,00.html |
| Posted by: ryuge 2006-01-26 13:35 |
| #4 And the final end of Cromwell doesn't constitute denunciation? Over six days in 1660, at the Restoration of Charles II, nine of those convicted of the regicide of Charles I in 1649 were hanged, drawn and quartered in London. Three more would suffer the same fate within two years. Additionally, the corpses of Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton were disinterred and hanged, drawn and quartered in posthumous executions for their involvement in the regicide. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-01-26 11:27 |
| #3 ryuge - The Linky thingy is empty. |
| Posted by: .com 2006-01-26 11:24 |
| #2 How about Pappenheim and Tilly? And don't forget the Goths, Vandals and Visigoths. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-01-26 11:19 |
| #1 One of the (many) reasons I can't take the ICC and similar bodies seriously is that we have never had a "Nuremburg trial" for former Communist nations.(Milosevic didn't get in trouble until he became an atavistic Serb nationalist) If the "international community" wants to blather about the need for "justice" they would have done well to start there. |
| Posted by: Phavise Slineque7310 2006-01-26 10:43 |