Former political prisoners discuss drafts with government

“We have the simplest request. We are 1500 people and we want a special pension. Artists receive a special pension, while we others lost years of our lives. I am childless. The communists damaged my organs. Some turned into spies through violence. They brought the 14-year-old daughter of one prisoner and threatened to rape her if he didn’t sign. They smashed her head on the table. She still has the scars today”, says Hysen Haxhiaj, vice chairman of the Institution of Political Prisoners.

The government draft is based on the experience of the German model. It will require that every person of public importance should have a certification showing if he has cooperated with the former Secret Service or not.

“I agree with the OSCE experts who say that this should be obligatory, not optional. Every institution should present the candidacies to the authority for opening the cases. We must get involved not only important people of the public life and who represent us in international institutions, but we should also enlarge it with people who lead media outlets, etc”, declared Daut Gumeni, a former political prisoner.

Civil Society demanded to open the former secret service files through a lustration procedure.

“Can we change the Constitution because of the lustration law? I think we should. We cannot remain on the hand of the Constitutional Court, the Commission of Venice or other foreign experts, who say other things in personal discussions, and other things in the reports they are forced to send you, because they cannot violate the laws of a country”, declared Elsa Ballauri, Human Rights activist.

“I think that this reasoning might be valid from the political point of view, but we must be very careful from the Constitutional one. We need to find the right constitutional and legal mechanisms”, declared the Socialist Party MP, Armando Subashi.

The OSCE declared that the government’s draft law cannot be implemented because it is anti-constitutional. The Albanian government wanted to open the files based on the German experience, which would bring transparency, according to them. Some of the former political prisoners  want to find a mutual agreement for the lustration procedure.

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