Albanians Want Secret Police Files Opened, Poll Finds

According to a poll published on Wednesday, 83 per cent of Albanian support opening up the files of the Communist-era secret police, known as the Sigurimi.

Roughly 71 per cent of respondents to the poll said if the files were opened to the public, public institutions should be "lustrated" of former agents or collaborators of the Sigurimi.

If the lustration is carried out, 35 per cent of the respondents said they believed that only top officials in public institutions should be dismissed. Another 57 per cent said they believe that mass dismissal should include all officials with links to the Communist security service.

Albania is one of the few countries in Eastern Europe where Communist-era secret police files are still a state secret.

Former dictator Enver Hoxha ruled Albania for nearly half-a-century with an iron fist, building a personality cult often compared to today's North Korea.

Paranoid about the dangers of a foreign invasion, Hoxha imprisoned tens of thousands of people with the help of the secret police.

Albania's Association of Former Political Prisoners believes that about 5,577 men and 450 women were executed for political crimes during the Communist era from 1946 to 1991. Tens of thousands of others were imprisoned or sent to labour camps.

The new centre-left government of Prime Minister Edi Rama has proposed a new bill in parliament to provide access to the secret files, based on the model that Germany used for the archives of the Stasi, the East German secret police.

The bill has yet to be discussed in parliament.

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