By Sidonja Manushi
What struck me as the most shocking news this week, although we are all still wandering around like headless chickens in the dusty aftermath of illegal elections, was the ruling Socialist Party’s intention to prevent a state institute tasked with probing Communist-era crimes in Albania from studying incidents that happened during World War II.
The head of this institute – the Institute for the Study of the Crimes of Communism – told BIRN that the legal amendments, proposed by ten Socialist MPs, are unacceptable.
In brief, the Albanian parliament is expected to approve amendments aiming to ban the study of WWII as part of the Communist period, while also demanding the 15 professionals hired at the institute receive security clearance.
“The Communist regime cannot be linked with the Anti-Fascist and National-Liberation War, because the elimination of political enemies only started after the war,” the proposed legislation states, claiming that research proving otherwise could shed dirt on the liberation fighters.
Regardless of whether the parliament approves this law – it arguably will as it is practically under the government’s control – the initiative itself is revolting on two different levels.
This is not the first time that this discussion leads to law amendments which affect the lives of citizens who suffered from communist crimes. For example, the law on the status of the persecuted persons recognizes the period between November 8, 1941 and March 22, 1991as the official communist era. However, the law regarding their compensation was changed several times (this has also been reported by other media), and currently recognizes the communist period from November 30, 1944 to October 1, 1991.”457 cases were affected by these amendments according to the National State Control, ending up without compensation. It is nowhere near democratic or just that a group of ten men can cause that in a country whose communism wounds are still fresh.
It is even less democratic, or intelligent, that a group of men with little-to-no historic knowledge and research experience do this.
None of the ten MP-s who undertook the initiative has a degree in History, while Head of the Laws Commission Ulsi Manja even less. Meanwhile, one of the institute’s 2014 publications which had listed 265 war leaders for different crimes and which was in the centre of debates regarding the issue, was at least put together by a researcher and expert in the field.
Whether these lists and other facts are true depends on researching the existing archives, but keeping history experts from doing that does not assist in Albania’s road towards healing its communist past by coming to terms with it. On the contrary, it adds a layer of communist mentality in this already-flawed Albanian democracy by protecting secrets and secrecy.
Apparently, the Socialists were inspired due to 2019 marking 75 years since the country’s liberation, and these developments just got me wondering whether the country was ever really liberated.
