The government revoked a decree that served as the legal basis for the commemoration just hours before Slovenia was due to mark National Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Communist Violence on Wednesday, triggering sharp criticism from the right and talk of a ‘new civil war’.
In a brief statement after a correspondence session, the Robert Golob government said that the memorial day had been declared without a “public and expert debate”.
The national memorial day was declared by the Janez Janša government by decree on 12 May 2022, just days before its term ended, with the reasoning being that communist violence left thousands dead on Slovenian soil between 1941 and 1946 while affecting hundreds of thousands more in the subsequent decades of communist rule.
The date was picked in memory of the killing of 49 people, including 44 Roma, in the Iška Gorge, south of Ljubljana, in 1942.
The declaration of memorial day was met with criticism on the left, which argued at the time that the underlying desire was to embroil the nation in an endless culture war.
The decision by the current government was expected given that the Social Democrats (SD), the junior coalition partners, said last week that the decree should be repealed since it is “mostly about revisionism and does nothing to reconcile the people.”
Janša, president of the Democrats, decried the government decision as “abhorrent” and said it amounted to “an announcement of a new civil war” and an “insult to all those who have at least a shred of sympathy for fellow humans.”
He accused the government of rehabilitating communist crimes and annulling “exceptional reconciliation efforts by a generation that made Slovenia democratic and independent.”
The government is “once again ready to fill pits and mining shafts with those who think differently,” he said in reference to mass graves of opponents of communism who were killed after the Second World War.
The Freedom Movement, the party of Prime Minister Golob, denounced Janša’s comments as a call to violence and renewed divisions and intolerance.
(Sebastijan R. Maček | sta.si)
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