Musine Kokalari, the woman who scared the Communist regime

This February 10th, her file was opened by request of her family, in order to shed light on the people who spied and convicted her during the communist regime.

Top Channel opens for the first time the decade-old file of the dissident who was imprisoned and interned by the communist dictatorship.

Her file is divided in two parts. One is kept at the Interior Ministry archive, made of hundreds of pages. It has documents about her trials, charges and sentencing to prison, then to be interned in Rreshen.

The other file is a Top Secret one, never published before. In this file, the collaborators of the former Secret Service are showing reporting each day for her activities. They have reported before she was sentenced, during her detention, but also while being interned.

“This was just the secret file. There are other materials, mounting up to 1000 pages, which can be found at the archive of the Interior Ministry”, said Genta Sula, Director of the Authority for Information on former Secret Service files.

Who were the collaborators who persecuted Musine Kokalari for 38 years? What was the platform of the woman seen by the communist government as a dangerous enemy to the country’s future?

Top Channel made a detailed report on its “Exclusive” show. Musine had been spied by over 20 persons, even from inside prison cells, until she died in Rreshen, in 1983. This is a quotation from her “dangerous” platform:

“The people who must rule our country must come from the ranks of teachers, doctors, artists. A group of them must travel to every corner of Albania for six months, meet people, get to know their reality, and then sit together and draft a platform. Another group must do the same thing for another six months, and only this way we can have a decent political and economic government program”, she wrote.

For this platform of the Social Democratic party she founded, Musine was sentenced to prison and was spied constantly.

The former Secret Service Director, Fatos Klosi, says opening these files now does nothing good about justice. It only satisfies the curiosity of people, but no legal actions can be taken against those who worked for the former communist government.

Linda Kokalari, her niece, remembers the first meeting with Musine after  many decades, when she was allowed to meet her in her death bed, in hospital. She asked the Authority to reveal the names of the 20 people who were close to her, and who spied her to the government.

The debate about opening old Secret Service files has been going on for the past 27 years of democracy in Albania. Musine Kokalari’s is the very first one, and time will show if this process will be valid or not, and if our society will be liberated from the shadows of the communist regime.

Top Channel