Sandra Kalniete - Human Rights Activism

Human Rights Activism

Having been born into a family who were the victims of Soviet crimes, Sandra Kalniete is involved in many human rights causes pertaining to totalitarian crimes. She is the chair of the Reconciliation of European Histories Group, an all-party group in the European Parliament aimed at coming to terms with the totalitarian past in many countries of Europe.

In 2004, she argued that "behind the Iron Curtain the Soviet regime continued to commit genocide against the peoples of Eastern Europe and, indeed, against its own people the two totalitarian regimes—Nazism and Communism—were equally criminal." She elaborated on this in 2006 when she came up with death counts for the two regimes, pointing out that the Soviet Union killed around 94.5 million people.

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