6 truthful and human. It reconciles us to man’s virtues and vices." 15 [In Spanish in the original.] 19. For Ionesco, everything in human existence is surrounded by mystery, the suffering and the happiness, the good and the bad and what is more surprising is that people become used to existence “so that it appears completely normal to us.” 16 When speaking out against the totalitarianisms that he witnessed during his lifetime, and against which, as an honest intellectual, he rebelled, Ionesco wrote: "(...) Now we are subjugated by the reason of State that allows all: genocides, assassinations, silencing the intellectuals. In other words, spiritual death. The State defends crime. The State promotes crime, justifies crime. [...] Culture, which is the only element that can allow a man to breathe and give him a little liberty, is devoured by the State, and everything must belong to the State, every individual must only be mobilized by the State, [...] his dreams must be the dreams of the State and, it is then, [...] when everyone is the State, that the State no longer exists." 17 [In Spanish in the original.] 20. Many other acts and practices of extreme cruelty and brutality can be added to the above list of cases that we have heard and, even though they have not been submitted to our consideration, they are public knowledge and notorious. Under repressive regimes, grave human rights violations have been ordered by the State, 18 and “in many case, the State itself has enacted laws that ensure that such acts were not illegal when they were committed” and created “additional obstacles” for the prosecution of the perpetrators. 19 State crimes are characterized by “willful intent (dolus as the gravest degree of fault).” 20 These practices have occurred not only in our region, but throughout the world. 21. In Europe, for example, during the Stalinist era, the State, with painstaking efficiency, promoted an “explicit policy of institutionalized illegality,” which resulted in from 17 to 20 million persons being murdered for political motives or subjected to “the most atrocious conditions of imprisonment, deportation and detention.” 21 In the heart of Europe, the Holocaust revealed absolute evil, the extremes of human iniquity, a State crime that constituted one of the most horrendous pages in the history of the world, which many avoid mentioning (and today there are even the socalled historical “revisionists” who seek to denature it). More recently, the Serbian policy of “ethnic cleansing” including “the indiscriminate murder of unarmed civilians, 15 . 116. E. Ionesco, El Hombre Cuestionado, Buenos Aires, Emecé Ed., 2002 [reed.], p. 117, and cf. p. 16 . Ibid., p. 154. 17 . Ibid., pp. 36 and 189-190. 18 . For a penetrating and devastating criticism of the so-called raison d'État, cf. Ernst Cassirer, El Mito del Estado, Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996 (re-ed.), pp. 7-352; and, regarding the “international criminality” of war, cf. N. Politis, Les nouvelles tendances du Droit international, Paris, Libr. Hachette, 1927, pp. 126-127. 19 . C.S. Nino, Juicio al Mal Absoluto, Buenos Aires, Emecé Ed., 1997, p. 231. 20 . G. Arangio-Ruiz, "Seventh report on State responsibility", UN/ILC doc. A/CN.4/469, of 9 May 1995, para. 49. 21 . Ibid., p. 43.