KONONOV CASE:
Why were collaborationists executed?
The Strasbourg Court ignored the fact that collaborationists were
executed not for the adherence to a certain ideology and not for
keeping German weapon at home, but for complicity in the brutal
murder of partisans. This fact is not articulated
by a Latvian official in the interview to RL.
If we replace Soviet partisans with American commandoes and Kononov
with American or English officer, the sentence to collaborationists
will be the same.
The scandalous decision of the upper chamber of the European Court
of Human Rights, which confirmed the decision of the Latvian court
that Vasily Kononov was a war criminal", affected both the adherents
of the former partisan and his persecutors. Thus, the Secretary
of the Ministery of Foreign Affairs of Latvia Andris Teikmanis
has recently commented on the news, received in May this year from
Strasbourg.
According to Andris Teikmanis, the commander of the detachment
Kononov directed "brutal death" of "civilians" and this crime has
no time limitation. But still some controversies were seen in the
speech of the Latvian official.
Let’s recall the events, preceding the arrival of Kononov to Mazie
Bati. Before this 12 partisans, who came to this village, were burned
and machine-gunned. A nurse with her seven-month-old son was among the
killed. The Germans gave the villagers weapon. But a detachment
of Latvian Partisan Battalion sentenced collaborationists from Mazie Bati
to death and the operation was conducted by Kononov and his
group.
"In court analysis it is said that if a person
possesses a gun but he doesn’t use it he is considered
to be a civilian. It means that if someone kills him
the killer is responsible for murdering a civilian, — Andris
Teikmanis states in his interview to RF. — We don’t take
into consideration the action of these civilians. Their guilt may
be stated only by the court. But there was no trial. There was
a murder of the villagers, men and women".
Thus, the Secretary of the Ministery of Foreign Affairs
of Latvia offers in wartime to convene the specialists (the
prosecutor, the lawyers and judges (and perhaps the press) to hold
a court over the fascist aiders, with breaks till the next month
as it happens today, for instance, with John Demjanjuk
in Germany. In March 2009 Attorney General’s office in Munich
issued the order to arrest of the former guard at concentration
camp Sobibor, who had personally destroyed the Jewish. The trial
is still on.
But the Latvian authorities are not able to understand that Vasily Kononov
had no time in May 1944 for organizing such a large-scale and
long-term affair. He had just his understanding of what is good
and what is bad and desire to protect his motherland —
Latvia — from Nazi and their henchmen. He didn’t want the perfidy
of "hospitable" villagers, armed by their German "friends"
to be repeated some time later with some of his
comrade-in-arms.
By the way, there were some controversial statements in the speech
of Teikmanis concerning the weapon. Acknowledging the fact of guns
possession by the villagers Teikmanis claims: "this was a rather
cruel killing of unarmed people; this was the basis for the court decision
and despite of politics of the accused he should
be accountable for his actions".
It is obvious that double standards of the Strasbourg Court,
respected by the high-ranking diplomat, imply that political orientation
towards the USSR, which set the world free from the perspective of the
Third Reich governance, is a convenient basis for condemning
sentences. While fascist ideology is a normal thing.
It was the approximate topic discussed in Lvov in September
of the past year. Then Lvov Regional Rada appealed to then president
Victor Juschtschenko and the prime-minister Yulia Tymoshenko with the request
to protect a Ukrainian Demjanjuk, who had become the victim
of the "international conspiracy". By the way, this "innocent person"
was a guard in the concentration camp, where thousand people
died.
The Strasbourg Court ignored the fact that collaborationists were executed not
for the adherence to a certain ideology and not for keeping German
weapon at home, but for complicity in the brutal murder
of partisans. This fact is not articulated by a Latvian
official in the interview to RL. If we replace Soviet
partisans with American commandoes and Kononov with American or English
officer, the sentence to collaborationists will be the same.
If revenge directed to fascist criminals is the international
conspiracy, then we should look for the origins
of it in the Nuremberg trial. Today due to the activity
of Latvia and some other Baltic republics, and not long ago Ukraine, the
forces, which helped Hitler, got an opportunity to revenge. And soft
Europe, which can’t decide whom it supports, doesn’t contribute
to it much.
"It seems that the German coalition in the West and the Japanese
in the East did nothing but correlate their military operations with
conventions on human rights, and the USSR revenged", — bloggers write
about the opinion of the Latvian official.
"The Latvians don’t understand (or they pretend that they don’t
understand) that villagers were put to death not for their support
of Germany (each person should make his choice) but for the help delivered
to the enemy. That is, they consciously followed the enemy and
performed their obligation. That’s why they were destroyed by the other
party as an enemy in wartime (during wartime losses may take
place; its main idea is every possible achievement of predominance
over the enemy by causing maximum possible damage in manpower and
equipment)", — participants
of blogosphere state.
It is easy to speak on humanism sitting on the sofa
in front of TV. But partisan Kononov perhaps thought
of something different the year before the great Victory. May
be he thought that the killers of his companions in arms
should be punished and that fascists should be annihilated. The same
was the thought of insurgents in the European states, not having
burdened themselves with double moral, who are protected today by the
European Court of Human Rights.
Maxim Nemov
|
