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Slovakia to investigate communist-era border killings
29.05.2008
Slovakia took a first step Thursday towards the possible prosecution of those believed responsible for the deaths of people seeking to flee the country under the former communist regime.
The Nation's Memory Institute (UPN) said it had filed case documents with the state prosecutor, naming dozens of border guards and their superiors accused of having a role in the killings.
"The cases are lodged almost 19 years after the revolution (ending the communist era) and I think it is sad that they did not come earlier," UPN director Ivan Petransky told reporters.
The institute was created in 2003 to provide access to undisclosed records of the activities of repressive organs of the former Czechoslovakia in the period from 1939 to 1989.
According to UPN, at least 600 people died trying to cross the western borders of Czechoslovakia -- either shot, electrocuted, drowned in the Danube, or the victims of land mines.
Along with Czech citizens, there were also Hungarians, Poles and Eastern Germans among the victims.
"According to our information, 42 people were killed at the Slovak-Austrian border, often very brutally, regardless of whether they were women, children or adults," the institute's documentation section director Lubomir Morbacher said.
World News (EAA) - AFP