Twenty-seven years ago, in February 1991, Gentiana Sula was standing in a crowd of thousands of Albanians who toppled a statute of the country’s dictator Enver Hoxha in the central square of the capital Tirana.
In the early 1990s, she was part of the student movement that wanted to end the 45-year-long isolation imposed on the country by Hoxha’s Stalinist-style regime – and its protests led to countrywide demonstrations and the collapse of the Communist regime.
But although Albania broke with Communist rule almost three decades ago, the process of dealing with the abuses of the past is still in its early days.
Sula now runs the Albanian Authority for Access to Information on Ex-Sigurimi Files, a state agency established in 2016 to collect the archive of the notorious Communist-era Sigurimi secret service, declassify information and provide those who were victims of the regime, or their relatives, with access to their files.
“We need to take time to know the truth,” Sula said. “For decades we lived in an abusive system.
“My daughter also asks me, ‘Mum, is it worth it going that deep?’, and I tell her that we need to know what happened,” she explained.
The Authority was established after the Albanian parliament passed a law in May 2015 to open up the Communist-era secret police files. The Authority was also given the power to run checks on political party officials and holders of public office to see if they were police collaborators during the period.
By September last year, the Authority had responded to more than 600 requests.
“We are the organisation that provides access to information. But what we noticed is that there is still fear. Everybody had someone [who was persecuted] and people feel itchy as they don’t know what they will found out,” Sula explained.
The spy next door
Albanians lived under constant surveillance for almost five decades. Just a few kilometres from Sula’s office is the house of former Communist leader Hoxha, who headed a brutal regime that took thousands of lives. Some 4,000 people are still listed as missing, including Sula’s grandfather.
Hoxha’s villa, now half-abandoned, is located in the Blloku district, which under his rule was guarded by soldiers and Sigurimi operatives, and only top party members were allowed to live there.
Today Blloku is home to cafes, modern shops and bars, symbolising the new Tirana, but before it was a symbol of Hoxha’s totalitarian state, with its closed borders and almost no chance of escape. Under his dictatorship, around 18,000 people were imprisoned for political reasons; some 6,000 were executed.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
