TIRANA: Almost two decades after communism, Albanians live in both fear and curiosity about secret police files on civilians that have been kept shut tight since the fall of the old regime.

Though some politicians have tried to have their contents of the files disclosed, results have been haphazard with only some of the less sensitive files made public.

“Each time the issue of opening the files is raised it is quickly stifled, with the excuse that the archives were destroyed or manipulated by politicians,” said Bedri Coku, who spent 34 years in communist-era prisons and labour camps.

The result means the Balkan country is “being kept in terror over the files,” he said.

Unofficial sources have estimated that about 20 per cent of Albanians collaborated with the notorious Sigurimi secret police, informing on “suspicious” activities of friends, neighbours, colleagues or even family members.

The Sigurimi, a powerful tool in the iron-fisted rule of longtime dictator Enver Hoxha, was established when he came to power after World War II in a bid to suppress opposition or anti-communist protests.

Western intelligence sources believe up to 10,000 people worked for the secret organisation during the communist period.

Following the regime’s collapse in 1991, six years after Hoxha’s death, the Sigurimi was dissolved and replaced by the National Intelligence Service (NIS).

Albanian media regularly publish what they claim to be files on contemporary public figures — without actually naming them — who allegedly worked for the Sigurimi.

Rumours also swirl about an alleged collaboration by present-day politicians or MPs with the former secret police.

“Laws adopted so far have proved inadequate to end such speculation or, with a few exceptions, to exclude former collaborators of the communist police from public life,” said Kastriot Dervishi, head of the interior ministry’s archives.

Parliament is expected to make a new attempt to draft legislation barring former secret police agents from political life. But disputes between the government and opposition have left many wondering whether such action is possible.

“Instead of helping the truth to come out, manipulating the issue has fuelled political immorality which, for years, has held Albanian politics and society hostage,” Albanian author Ismail Kadare told AFP.

“Only the end of the speculation will allow Albania’s politics and society to be purged of the fever and darkness of the files,” he said.

Ramiz Alia, who succeeded Hoxha and was the country’s last communist president, favours opening the files but warns they may “bring nothing useful”.

“There is a need to open them,” he said, but insists “the archives have been destroyed, selected and manipulated by all governments” since the end of communism.

Sources close to Albanian secret police said that former communist officials started dispersing the archives as early as 1991, trying to eliminate potentially compromising reports — a practice the sources said was continued by successive, democratic governments here.

In 1997, during an armed civilian rebellion over a failed pyramid investment scheme, some files were found stored in an underground defence ministry facility nearby the capital Tirana.

Armed groups hoping to find Albania’s gold reserves were disappointed and threw the documents into the river.

“Only some 30,000 files have remained in the archives, most of them dealing with little known people or former collaborators who are already dead,” Dervishi said.—AFP