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Organisation

The Foundation for the Investigation of Communist Crimes (FICC) was established on April 2008. The main priority of the Foundation is to inform the general public of the crimes committed by Communist regimes. The Foundation's webpage serves as a multilevel database and interactive portal providing easier access to various subjects related to Communist regimes, Communist ideology and post-Communist studies.

Besides dissemination and international research activities, the FICC promotes social, educational, advisory programs and specific projects developed with the support of institutional and private-sector partners around the world. The Foundation takes measures to publicize and memorialize the crimes of former and contemporary Communist regimes. With a series of programs and projects, the Foundation seeks to raise awareness of Communist crimes and support the democratic opposition of the last remaining Communist regimes, transitional societies and post-Communist states.

Over the last 15 years, many former Communist states have debated their Communist past and established parliamentary and academic committees or commissions, research institutes or independent groups to investigate the crimes of the past, without an immediate purpose of organizing trials, but to establish and acknowledge facts about their past. Such truth commissions have assessed evidence and put together authoritative accounts of the Communist past.

This is vital, as it constitutes a factual basis for open debate on the protection of natural liberties and the responsibilities of the political community. Common acknowledgement of historical facts has been and shall be a precondition for liberty. These facts, however, cannot be established without an open discussion on past events and injustices.

Post-Communist states willing to deal with political responsibility for past abuses must also decide on lustration, rehabilitation, compensation and the reassessment of history. But reconciliation with the past is not only a matter for state institutions, legislation, courts or truth commissions. The large amount of existing Communist crimes research must be brought to light and the public message conveyed more clearly. The FICC's mission is to spread existing knowledge and make a difference in global awareness and understanding of the crimes of Communist regimes.