Bratislava, Slovakia - UPF Slovakia organized a special event on December 19 to commemorate the end of Communism in the Soviet Union 20 years ago. In Moscow on December 25, 1991, the Communist Party was abolished and on December 31, the Soviet Union was formally dissolved. The "Evil Empire" and the "Cold War" became a thing of the past, and a period of real security dawned in Europe.
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UPF-Slovakia took this opportunity to highlight the enormous contributions by its founder to end Communism. Rev. Sun Myung Moon had initiated Victory over Communism and CAUSA activities as well as the Professors World Peace Academy, which through countless events informed people around the globe about Communism's ideological errors, political threats, and violations of human rights.
The event "The End of Communism? Time to Celebrate?" in the Business Center in the Slovak capital Bratislava was announced via press release by the national press agency TASR. Many people expressed interest, among them former prime minister Jan Carnogursky, himself an advocate of human rights during the Communist period. About 40 people attended the event.
The first presentation was given by Lubomír Morbacher, Ph.D., from the Nation's Memory Institute. The Institute systematically accumulates and processes all types of information, records, and documents pertaining to the period of Communist oppression. Mr. Morbacher is one of the best experts in the field and often appears in the media. He explained the ideological roots and brutal methods of the Communist state terror against religious believers. He is co-author of the bookThe Crimes of Communism in Slovakia, which includes a section about the persecution of Unification Church members in the mid-1970s.
The next speaker was Dr. Juraj Lajda, whose publishing company Ideal had translated the book March to Moscow by Thomas J. Ward into the Czech language. His presentation focused on the Victory over Communism and CAUSA activities from the beginnings in Korea until the Moscow meeting of Rev. Moon and Soviet president Michail Gorbachev in 1990. The book gives rich evidence how the work of Rev. Moon helped to save the lives of millions of people around the globe. Victory Over Communism activities began in 1968 and reached out to 4 million people in South Korea. In the 1980s CAUSA organized seminars for thousands of ministers in the United States; in Latin and South America CAUSA held 120 seminars for tens of thousands of leaders of society. The founding of The Washington Times and its strong support of US President Ronald Reagan's foreign policy was a masterstroke in the ideological struggle.
Afterwards, Milos Klas, Secretary General of UPF-Slovakia, explained that important contacts from that period are involved in the work of UPF. Next he read a letter from Alzbeta Daniskova, a member of the Unification Church who was sent to prison for more than four years even though she had a broken spine. The prison authorities did not allow her to receive adequate medical treatment.
The next speaker was Juraj Durik, a national representative of the Chinese movement Falun Gong. He explained the methods used by Communist China to destroy any religion or church if it does not submit to the rules of the regime. He portrayed the development of Falun Gong and the suffering of its members in China today. The measures used against them are identical to the ones taken against Christians in the Soviet Union, including isolation in mental hospitals and imprisoned in labor camps.
The concluding discussion between the speakers and the audience centered on the question of if and how the Slovak society has learned from its totalitarian past, and whether the crimes of the Communist period have been punished. The unison answer was no. The guests stayed an hour longer than the organizers originally had expected, so strong was their interest in the topic.