The Tismaneanu Commission, about to end their activity serving Cotroceni Palace, could have as well not existed. There is no need of 660, 666 or, 1660 pages to condemn communism. The condemnation of the crimes committed by the Communist regime in Romania can be more easily achieved, without wasting so much paper. The Nuremberg Court model is more than enough. The Nazi regime in Germany was condemned on grounds of a set of clear principles, as simple as possible. Any person committing a deed that is a crime in international law is responsible for it and must be sentenced. The fact that national laws don't set sentences for a deed that is a crime in international law doesn't spare the respective person of responsibility within international law. The fact that the person committing such a deed did it as a head of state or as a government official doesn't deprive him/ her of responsibility. The deed committed to obey orders from the government or from a superior doesn't deprive him/ her of responsibility, if the person was able to make a moral option. The Nuremberg principles define crimes against humanity as follows: homicide, extermination, turning people into slaves, deporting people and more inhuman deeds done against any civil population: persecution on political, racial or religious grounds. The leaders of the Communist regime in Romania broke their own legislation, which would be enough for convicting them. It is enough to only list some of the rights of socialist Romania's citizens the way they were settled in the 1965 Constitution: the right to education, minorities have got the right to use their mother tongues freely, women are equal in rights with men, the right to get associated in organizations, the freedom of speech, press, sessions, meetings and demonstrations. Let's take a secretary-in-chief working for a local Communist Party branch as example. He was responsible for the activity of the Securitate (Communist Secret Service in Romania) in the district he guided. Suppose Iasi was this district. The 1965 Constitution guaranteed "a person's inviolability". Here is the fragment: "No person may be retained or arrested in case of no proves or thorough clues showing he/ she committed a deed specified and sentenced by law. Authorities may demand a person should be retained for 24 hours the longest. A person may be arrested only on grounds of a warrant released by a court or a prosecutor." It goes even further: "Homes are inviolable. No one is allowed to enter someone's house without the respective person's consent, except for the cases and circumstances specified in the law." And more: "The secrecy of personal mail or phone calls is granted." If you just look through any record the CNSAS (National Council for Research on the Communist Secret Service Archive) has got, you can see breaks of all these rights. If you link it to the Nuremberg principles, you can detect the guilty ones and send them to court, for many are still alive. You don't even need scientific disputes on the number of those Romanians sent to work for the building of the grand Danube-Black Sea channel or of political prisoners. Given the clues we have so far, we ca notice the members of the Tismaneanu Commission have been rather busy with drawing personal collections of records taken from various archives. I don't now if the ex Securitate collaborators now in this honor commission too have been curious enough to take a look at their own works again. If not out of curiosity, then at least for writing their true memoirs. We will once again have public ado for no real condemnation.

George Damian