IN the early 1970s, Spartak Ngjela spoke out against the Stalinist government of Albania. He spent 14 years in prison for taking such liberties.
Today a member of Parliament, he is fighting to open up the files of the Sigurimi secret police, 18 years after Europe’s most hard-line communist regime under Enver Hoxha collapsed. “I want to open all the files of these agents, these spies, everyone who is involved in the state terror,” he said passionately in the Albanian capital Tirana. “Without the Sigurimi, Enver Hoxha was nothing. The secret service at that moment was his right hand.”
Years after other ex-communist states in Eastern Europe dealt with their secret police files, Albania is grappling anew with the records of the Sigurimi. During Stalinist rule, the secret police employed 800 staffers, including operatives and clerks, according to a former Sigurimi official. They also relied on a vast web of unpaid informants, some of whom were blackmailed into helping keep tabs on fellow citizens. No one seems to know how many Albanians worked as informants or helped the Sigurimi, but lawmaker Ngjela estimates it involved 17 percent of the population. In the 1960s one communist official once said one in four people were involved.
For now, most officials are not calling for an opening of all files to those who were monitored, a system used in former communist eastern Germany. “I am not in favor to open up for everybody,” Prime Minister Sali Berisha told Reuters. “It is not to blame (people). What is very important is to close the chapter.” One issue complicating a full unveiling involves current politicians, some of whom could be embarrassed if skeletons in their closets are revealed.
Ngjela accused Berisha of having denounced people during his time as a Communist Party official. In the interview, Berisha denied that he or any member of his Cabinet had any secret police links and added anyone who did should not be in his government.
