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Law on Declaring the Criminal Nature of the Communist Regime
in Bulgaria
Promulgated, State Gazette, Issue No 37 of 5 May
2000
Art.1. (1) The Bulgarian Communist
Party (named at that time Bulgarian Workers’ Party (Communists))
seized the power on 9 September 1944 with the help of a foreign
force, which had declared war on Bulgaria and in contradiction to
the Constitution in force (Tarnovo Constitution).
(2) The Bulgarian Communist Party
is responsible for State governance from 9 September 1944 to 10
November 1989 that has led the country to national catastrophe.
Art. 2. (1) The leadership
and the leaders of the Bulgarian Communist Party are responsible
for:
- purposefully and deliberately ruining the values
of European civilization;
- intentional violation of human rights and liberties;
- unprecedented elimination of the Members of XXV
National Assembly and of all innocent people convicted by the
co called “Peoples’ Court”
- the moral and economic decline of the State;
- establishing a centralised and directive ruling
of economy which has led to its decay;
- crushing and repealing the traditional property
right principles;
- dissolving people’s moral values and encroaching
upon their religious freedom;
- employing permanent terror against people who disagree
with the system of ruling and against whole groups of the population;
- abusing education, training, science and culture
for political and ideological purposes, including justifying and
creation of motivation to the acts described above;
- unscrupulous destruction of nature.
(2) The communist regime is responsible for:
- depriving citizens of any possibility to express
political will by forcing them to hide their opinion of the situation
in the country and forcing them to express in public their approval
for facts and circumstances, which they knew were not true and
which even constituted crime; this was achieved by persecutions
and threats to persecute individuals, their families and close
persons;
- systematic violation of the basic human rights,
oppressing whole groups of the population, formed on political,
social, religious or ethnic basis, regardless of the fact that
in 1970 the People’s Republic of Bulgaria had already joined the
international instruments in the field of human rights;
- violating the main principles of democracy, rule
of law, international agreements and legislation in force thus
placing the Communist Party and its representatives’ interests
above the Law;
- persecuting citizens using all means of power,
such as:
- executions, inhuman imprisonment regimes, forced
labour camps, tortures and cruel violence;
- certifying or placing people in psychiatric institutions
as a mean of political repression;
- depriving from the right of property;
- preventing and banning education and the pursuit
of a profession;
- preventing free movement in the country as well
as out of the country;
- deprivation of citizenship;
- committing unpunished crimes and awarding unlawful
privileges to persons involved in the commission of crimes and
in the persecutions of another persons;
- subjecting the interests of Bulgaria to a foreign
country to the extent which led to the ruin of national dignity
and to practical loss of state sovereignty.
Art. 3. (1) The circumstances specified in
Art. 1 and Art. 2 give ground to declare the criminal nature of
the communist regime in Bulgaria from 9 September 1944 to 10 November
1989.
(2) The Bulgarian Communist Party has been a criminal
organisation resembling other organisations based on its ideology,
the activities of which were aimed at suppressing human rights and
the democratic system.
Art. 4. All actions taken by persons during
the specified period to resist and to reject the communist regime
and its ideology are fair, morally justified and deserving honour.
Translation from Bulgarian by Dora Atanasova
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