Opening of Police Files

BREAKING UP WITH THE PAST

AIM Skopje, September 10, 1999

The Macedonian Government has adopted the long-awaited decision on the opening of police files which various police services have been compiling for over five decades. The public expects that this third try will bring results. One of the imperatives of the so called "Macedonian Spring" from the beginning of this decade was the opening of police files. In 1993, the then Minister of the Interior, Ljubomir Frchkovski, proposed the opening of police files but his good idea soon got lost somewhere in the parliamentary procedure, as did the next one. Now things have changed. There have been significant changes in the composition of Parliament so that the mover of this Law, the Macedonian Government, hopes that the procedure will be over by the end of September.

According to the information of Pavle Trajanov, Minister of the Interior, secret services have some 14 thousand files which had been created in the past 50 years or so. The material is formidable and consists of about 700 thousand pages, mostly on microfilm. A part was computer-processed. According to Minister Trajanov these files contain all sorts of data about people from the former opposition as well as the authorities: politicians, scientists, journalists...The public interest was especially aroused by the information that the police meticulously "took care" of the activities of the present Prime Minister Ljubco Georgijevski as recently as the last parliamentary election. In the process all the available means were used - lawful and unlawful ones alike - namely, spying, bugging, photographing, etc. This fact alone is incriminating enough as one provision of the Constitution in no uncertain terms prohibits the collection of data on citizens in this manner.

At the moment the Government is in two minds as to the manner of publishing the data: whether to publish all the data without any prior selection or to allow the opening of files which contain compromising material on certain citizens or public personalities, only with their personal consent or approval of their relatives. The intention is to spare the relatives embarrassment as they are not responsible for the behaviour of their kin. Still, the greatest problem is what to do with the informers. Namely, the police has special files on all those who were "snitches" in the name of "lofty revolutionary aims" or because of their own base motives. Legal experts advise caution as there could be two types of "rats": those who did it voluntarily and those who did it under pressure. Minister Trajanov himself advocates the destruction of these files without much fuss.

A parliamentary commission will have the last say. It will be composed of parliamentary delegates, but also legal and historic experts. It is hard to tell how willing will parliamentarians be to finally close the "police files" case. It remains to be seen whether everyone be satisfied with the legal way this debt to history is honoured.

Part of the public will protest against the fact that one-time "rats" will peacefully live their last days. Some officials therefore think that it would be good if the truth were forced out without stirring up feelings. They remind that the mentioned 700 thousand pages of packed 14 thousand human fates were the fruit of the past labour of some 23 thousand informers and therefore ask: can their (mis)deeds be disregarded? All the more as some of these informers used to be and some are even today highly placed in the state establishment. Those who demand that justice be done base their request on the argument that everything else aside, some of these acts were in direct violation of the country's Constitution and have not yet fallen under the statute of limitations so that their perpetrators should be brought to justice.

In recent years the Macedonian papers have started selectively using police files. Individual dailies, and especially weeklies are known for their close links with the police. Just before last year's parliamentary election some renown Macedonian journalists were accused of disgracing the profession by using police files which "corresponding services" have provided them with instead of resorting to well-informed journalistic sources. However, things never went further than pre-election skirmishes. Nevertheless, many one-time members of the opposition will, from their today's government cabinets, remember with bitterness the commissioned journalistic stories about them which their authors could not have written using the usual sources and research but only through police files.

Historians also have something to say about these files. The new law will certainly envisage the storing of some of these files where they rightfully belong - in historic archives. Even the present law envisages a possibility of storing some materials in archives, but little has been done in that respect. Some historians warn of the deficiency of police documentation. Namely, the police primarily kept files on all those who were considered opponents from the party's point of view. At one time those were Cominform supporters, after that anarcho-liberals, while the constant subjects of surveillance were nationalists or those labelled as such. Historians therefore think that they should be included in the parliamentary commission without fail. However, that won't be easy either as there are serious ideological disagreements within the historic guild.

Time and time again human right activists have pointed out that apart from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Macedonia is the only country which has done nothing about police files. Impartial observers could not help noticing that little has been done regarding the re-examination of recent past. For example, many streets, settlements, squares in Macedonia still bear the name of personalities whose place in history has already been determined, like Lenin, Marx and even some more recent communist theoreticians. What is more, in the last five decades the question of the island of Goli Otok was never seriously opened, nor of the rehabilitation of political opponents from those times. A commentator recently raised a rhetoric question on the pages of a reputable Skopje weekly: will Macedonia be ready to break with its past? Or will that, perhaps, only open new traumas and dilemmas?

AIM Skopje

ZELKO BAJIC