The Greek government declined to take part in an international conference that denounces crimes committed by communist regimes. The Greek Minister of Justice, Stavros Kontonis sent a statement in response to an invitation by the Estonian Presidency, which is organising the conference differentiating the ideologies of communism and Nazism. “Nazism and communism are not the same parts of the same equation”, the announcement read. The statement claimed communism was the fountain of many democratic and liberation movements. In the 2008 Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism it was stated that crimes committed under communism were often crimes against humanity, according to the definition developed in the Nuremberg Trials, and that the crimes committed under communism and Nazism were comparable.
The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, in the People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.
The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from 21-70 million.