Sofia, Bulgaria—The first public forum on The Nine Commentaries on the communist Party in Bulgaria was held on 2005, Dec.14 at the Euro-Bulgarian Cultural Centre in Sofia. Its guest speakers included Professor Li Shao, Reader at the Nottingham University in England; Plamen Tzvetkov, Bulgaria's well-known historian and Professor of history at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia; Hristo Hristov, author and journalist; and Vasil Stanilov, founder of the Pro & Anti Newspaper, which has played a keen role in covering the changes after the fall of communism in Bulgaria and in promoting democracy in Bulgaria.
Present at the forum were also reporters, democracy activists, representatives of NGOs, politicians, university students, and people oppressed by Bulgaria's former communist regime.
"I help publicize [ The Nine Commentaries ] because I believe that it concerns not only China, but also the people around the world," said Professor Li Shao, whose speech drew attention to the Chinese communist regime's corruption, human rights violations regarding the freedoms of speech and belief, deceptive figures about China's hollow economy, and spreading of propaganda through the media both in and outside China.
In emphasizing that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) relies on media control to sustain its dwindling power, Li cited the case of the U.S.-based New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV) as example. Because NTDTV broadcasts uncensored news to China, said Li, in 2005 the CCP pressured NTDTV's satellite provider—the French company Eutelsat—to terminate its contact with the TV station. Out of the CCP's expectation, however, 73 members of the European Parliament, 93 U.S. senators, many NGOs, and numerous audiences supported the TV station by petitioning on its behalf, he said. In September 2005 Eutelsat signed a long-term contract with NTDTV.
Li said, with the Nine Commentaries revealing the real nature of the CCP, when people realize what the CCP is all about and how it is by nature an oppressive entity, people will lose no time speaking up against it, and its members will cut all their ties with it.
Believing that The Nine Commentaries will speed up the peaceful removal of the totalitarian regime in China and help start a democratic society, Li said that in the near future when people look back, they will have a much clearer view of the atrocities that communism has brought.
When asked how post-communist China could be governed, Li ansrwered, "Maybe we should ask ourselves what there was in China before communism came." China had no less than 5000 years of history before communism took over, just as Bulgaria had 1300 years of history before the arrival of communism, he said, noting that ancient China had Confucian philosophy and various beliefs to provide people with principles and guidelines, which were not the class struggle propagated by communism.
According to Professor Plamen Tzvetkov, Communism, like Nazism, must be condemned. He reviewed from the historical perspective the crimes of the communist regimes around the world and compared their victims to those of World War II.
About the number of killing by communist regimes, Tzvetkov said it was known that during the period between the Bolshevik Revolution and the death of Stalin in 1953, around 80 to 90 million people were killed, excluding the 20-25 million deaths during World War II and the 2.5 million Germans killed during the ethnic cleanup in Eastern Prussia. "The number also does not include the 1.5 million German war hostages as well as 600,000 Hungarian and Romanian war hostages of whom only one-tenth survived in the Siberian death camps," he said.
Tzvetkov said bringing communism to justice is still difficult because the communist party still has its power influence. He used Bulgaria as an example, where the majority of the ruling officials are descendants of the previous communist leaders. "You know in whose arms our most popular newspapers and television stations are—they are all in the hands of the former communist cadres and those closely related to the former state security authorities."
Economic interest is another reason cited by Tzvetkov for the slow progress in condemning communism. He recalled that in the mid-1990s there were public debates in the U.S. about the forced labor behind China's low-cost products—many Americans were scandalized by the fact that their country was importing products manufactured by forced labor in China's labor campus. But in the end, Tzvetkov said, instead of imposing restrictions on China, the Clinton administration renewed China's most-favored-nation status anyway on the basis of the economic interests of the U.S.
Elaborating on the characteristics of Communist ideology, Tzvetkov said, "What is the most fearful about Communism? Its denial of the humanness of personality. Marx once said that everybody's personality is nothing but a sum of public relationships. When one ignores personality, when one thinks of a person as some kind of a screw, a nut, or a little piece of brick, one can create a perfect society. But such a perfect society cannot be created in reality, because every person is unique."
In his speech, Mr. Stanilov likened communism to bird flu: It is a lethal virus that could hide in beautiful objects.
The audience participated enthusiastically in the discussion. Many of them expressed that it was important for the people in Bulgaria to know the real nature of communism and reflect on it through open discussions like The Nine Commentaries forum.
The Nine Commentaries , an honest, uncensored history of the Chinese Communist Party, is a series of nine editorials published by The Epoch Times first in Chinese in November 2004. Since then it has been translated into no less than 22 languages and has caused over 8 million people to withdraw from the CCP and its affiliated organizations.
According to Ms. Ekaterina Popova, host of there forum, the translation of The Nine Commentaries into Bulgaria was completed in October 2005. Since then, 93 people have announced severing all their previous ties with the Bulgarian Communist Party while condemning the Communist regime.
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