TIRANA, Jan. 24 – Prime Minister Edi Rama said last Saturday that Albania will open the secret files of the communist era, adding that Albania and Russia were the only states that have not done what other countries have done years earlier.
“Finally, Albania will open the files of that period,” Rama wrote on Twitter, following his attendance at the opening of the Museum of Surveillance in Tirana, a former communist-era secret service base. Opening of the Sigurimi communist secret police files is a delicate issue, often attempted by governing political parties in post-communist Albania as a tool to fight the opposition.
There have been two proposals in parliament about opening the files, one from the government and the other from a bipartisan group of MPs and the civil society.
There is a growing demand that Albania should follow the same format as in Germany, where all former political prisoners or those who suffered from the former communist regime were entitled to ask for and see their own files.
So nothing is going to be made public, but at the same time, the proposals mean that all former Sigurimi associates will be excluded from all political and public posts.
