Romania moves to punish gulag guards

chilling details emerge about torment guards inflicted upon prisoners in Romanian communist-era gulags

Guards slammed doors on prisoners fingers,beat them on the soles of their feet and burned them with cigarettes. They served rotten meat and forced inmates to eat excrement as punishment. In extremes of heat and cold,they made their victims haul crushing loads until they collapsed.

After decades of denial,chilling details are emerging about the torment guards inflicted upon political prisoners in Romanian communist-era gulags,as part of a first small step toward holding them to account. The names of 35 guards now in their 80s or 90s are to be handed to authorities starting next week for possible prosecution by a government institution tasked with investigating communist-era crimes,The Associated Press has learned.

The perpetrators of communist-era crimes have long been shielded by Romanias establishment,whose ranks are filled with members of the former Securitate secret police. But the movement to expose Romanian gulag guards has a powerful champion in the Liberal Party,which is now part of the governing coalition. Members of the party were targeted by the Communists in their crackdown on all perceived dissent after it came to power in 1946.

Of Romanias 617,000 political prisoners,120,000 died in the gulags. The inmates included politicians,priests,peasants,writers,diplomats and children as young as 11. Most survivors died before seeing any chance of justice.

Those still alive 8211; about 2,800 in all 8211; now see a glimmer of hope as the Institute for Investigating the Crimes of Communism and the Memory of the Romanian Exile begins probing allegations against the 35 guards on the list,as well as other communist-era crimes.

The institute was founded by Liberal Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu in 2006. Its only since the party returned to government as a junior coalition partner last year that the institute has begun probing crimes committed in the 1950s and 60s 8211; the darkest period of Romanian communism 8211; aided by a Liberal-led interior ministry that has provided names and addresses. Like other former Warsaw Pact countries,Romania got rid of its top level communists during the 1989 revolution,but less than a handful were punished after former Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife,Elena,were executed.

The institutes executive director says that has to change. Those who produced so much suffering and terror have to pay and even if they are 80 and 90, said Andrei Muraru. They are not absolved of responsibility.