An international conference was held in Prague on February 24-6, 2010 on the subject of "Crimes of Communism". This was connected with the initiative known as the Platform of European Memory and Conscience.

For further information on the conference and the Platform, see http://www.crimesofcommunism.eu/home.html.

The 1956 Institute was one of the co-organizers and cooperating partners in the conference. The organizers requested certain national institutions to prepare national reports. In Hungary's case these were the 1956 Institute, the Historical Archives of the State Security Services and the Terror House Museum, and under an agreement between them, the report was prepared by János M. Rainer. The text can be read below: http://www.rev.hu/rev/images/content/rendezvenyek/praga2010_report.pdf

The documentum about platform can be read below.

Photo Gallery: http://www.crimesofcommunism.eu/photogallery.html

Security Services Archive Guide to the Collections: www.abscr.cz/en/guide-to-the-collections

International Cooperation 1948-1989: www.ustrcr.cz/en/international-cooperation

Web Project: The Events of 1989 in Czechoslovakia (including a partial list of personnel of the intelligence services): www.ustrcr.cz/en/project-the-events-of-1989-in-czechoslovakia

DECLARATION ON CRIMES OF COMMUNISM

We, the participants of the international conference "Crimes of the Communist Regimes" held in Prague on 24-26 February 2010, declare the following:

1. Communist regimes have committed, and are in some cases still committing, crimes against humanity in all countries of Central and Eastern Europe and in other countries where communism is still alive.
2. Crimes against humanity are not subject to statutory limitations according to international law; however, the justice done to perpetrators of Communist crimes over the past 20 years has been extremely unsatisfactory.
3. We must not deny the tens of millions of victims of Communism their right to justice.
4. Since crimes against humanity committed by the communist regimes do not fall under the jurisdiction of existing international courts, we call for the creation of a new international court with a seat within the EU for the crimes of communism. Communist crimes against humanity must be condemned by this court in a similar way as the Nazi crimes were condemned and sentenced by the Nuremberg tribunal, and as the crimes committed in former Yugoslavia were condemned and sentenced.
5. Not punishing the communist criminals means disregard of and thus weakening of international law.
6. As an act of reparation and restitution, European countries must introduce legislation that equalizes the pensions and social security benefits of perpetrators of communist crimes so that they are equal to or smaller than those of their victims. 
7. As democracy must learn to be capable of defending itself, Communism needs to be condemned in a similar way as Nazism was. We are not equating the respective crimes of Nazism and Communism, including the Gulag, the Laogai and the Nazi concentration camps. They should each be studied and judged on their own terrible merits. Communist ideology and communist rule contradict the European Convention of Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. Just as we are not willing to relativise crimes of Nazism, we must not accept a relativisation of crimes of Communism.  
8. We call upon EU member states to increase the awareness raising and education about crimes of communism; we remind them of the need to implement, without further delay, the Resolution of the European Parliament (2 April 2009) to mark 23 August as the European-wide Day of Remembrance of the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.
9. We call upon the European Commission and European Council of Justice and Home Affairs to adopt a Framework Decision introducing a pan-European ban on excusing, denying or trivializing the crimes of communism.
10. The creation of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, as supported by the European Parliament and the EU Council in 2009, must be completed at EU level.
Individual governments must live up to their commitments regarding the work of the Platform.
11. As an act of recognition of the victims and respect for the immense suffering inflicted upon half of the continent, Europe must erect a memorial to the victims of world Communism, following the example of the memorial in the USA in Washington, D.C.