Brno - A group of former Czechoslovak citizens, who - as members of "Sudeten" German minority - had seen their property confiscated after the WWII, did not succeed with their complaint to the United Nations in which they asked for the houses to be returned.
The UN's Human Rights Committee ruled their petition "unacceptable".
After the decision of the European Court of Human Rights , it is the second time the Sudeten Germans' appeal was turned down by an international body.
In general, this latest development shows that the WWII events continue to be an issue in the region of Central and Eastern Europe.
In their appeal, the Germans complained of being discriminated by the Czech Republic, criticizing Czech politics for not implementing any law that would enable them to get back the property confiscated after the war.
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"Crime against humanity"
"We were driven out of our homeland with the collective responsibility doctrine being used against us. A crime against humanity was committed," the group wrote in the complaint Aktualne.cz has at its disposal.
The UN committee, consisting of 18 experts, however accepted counter-arguments raised by the Czech government as relevant. According to the committee, the property was confiscated immediately after the WWII, while the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which allows people to fill in complaints to the UN, was adopted by Prague in the years 1975 and 1991.
"The covenant cannot be used retrospectively," the committee ruled. "Property confiscation is a one-time act, with no continuing effects."
On the basis of the decrees of Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš, three millions of Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia had their property and civil rights taken away. This created the basis for their eventual expulsion.
"Incomparable to Nazi violence"
Sudeten German activists want the decrees, together with an amnesty law pardoning the atrocities committed during the post-war expulsion, abolished.
Czech president Václav Klaus said that the scope of the post-war violence committed by Czechs against Germans was incomparably smaller than the Nazi violence in occupied territories.
German president Christian Wulff said that Germany still needs to be aware of the crimes it committed against the Czech nation, and that it needs to be responsible for those atrocities. Wulff added that these crimes cannot be compared with what happened in Czechoslovakia after the war.
"On the other hand I believe that since it has been 65 years since the end of the WWII, we can speak about old events that happened in its context," Wulff said.
Read more: 2010: Czechs at the same level as East Germans in 1990
