How to deal without dossiers
ExpiredRehabilitation of the victims of political terror
How to deal without dossiers
It would be cynical to rehabilitate the innocent victims of political terror together with real criminals, as they did not deserve to be pushed into the company of criminals, enemies of the country and of the people in the first place.
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted the Resolution on Measures for Dissolution of the Heritage of Ex-Communist Totalitarian Systems on its 23rd session in 1996. Point 9 of this document reads, “Parliamentary Assembly welcomes the initiative to put the dossiers of secret services in some ex-communist countries out for the public to view. It invites all countries to oblige to the request of those who are interested and enable the viewing of dossiers kept by their former secret services.”
Great majority of former socialist countries (nearly all of them) have done so. Not all of them in the same way. Some of them did it in a radical, some in a “softer” way. However, they all did something about it. Serbia, however, did not.
The unwillingness to resolve the problem of secret dossiers from the aspect of the desired, successful process of democratic transition is, without a doubt, a serious issue. Sometimes this unwillingness seems completely irrational, as it may obstruct achieving good results.
One of those activities has recently started - the process of court rehabilitation of victims of political and ideological terror has started. The necessary legal preconditions for the start of this process were established in April 2006 when the Serbian National Parliament adopted the Rehabilitation Act. This law has created the possibility to apply for rehabilitation and it applies to the individuals who were deprived of life, freedom or any other right due to political or ideological reasons, with or without a proper court or administrative decision.
The public was finally informed that some courts had passed first decisions on the rehabilitation of victims of political terror.
The value of rehabilitation, which is based on the principles of justice and truth, cannot be questioned. This is why all the problems arising from determining the truth cannot be underestimated or ignored. The truth is sometimes obvious, but sometimes lots of data must be gathered before the truth is determined. When we talk about the information important for the victims of political terror, most of them are definitely kept in the dossiers stored in the archives of secret services. In this context, it is a fact that these dossiers are still locked up and practically inaccessible, which is truly absurd.
However, this situation is similar to another one, something that was often characteristic of the methodology of the executioner of “revolutionary justice”. It is the custom to “treat” the victims of political terror simultaneously with real traitors and criminals. This methodology resulted in, for example, the lists of people who were executed and which contain the names of the innocent as well as of the guilty.
The fact that some people have suffered or become innocent victims only because of their different political or ideological beliefs insults the very idea of justice. And when they are forced to serve their undeserved sentences together with real traitors or criminals, the injustice becomes even more cynical.
It would be even worse if the innocent victims of political terror were rehabilitated together with those who deserved to spend time in prison. This is something that definitely needs to be prevented and something that - as long the dossiers of secret services continue to be mystified - must not be ignored. Naturally, it is logical to assume that the services that still control these files will co-operate with courts of law. However, the unpleasant experiences show that the scope and the intensity of such co-operation should not be left at the good will of these services.
Naturally, the problem of determining the truth in the process of rehabilitation of victims of political terror is not the only reason why the dossiers of secret services need a different approach. There are many reasons why these dossiers should be made available, such as the fact that many painful issues that still bother us from the past should be closed down, that a new, democratic value system should be built, that the fundamental, civilized need of the society to process in an expert and scientific way the documents that witness a stage in our history, and many more.
This is why it is important that we remind ourselves of the fact that the year 2006 is ten years since the Resolution on Measures for Dissolution of the Heritage of Ex-Communist Totalitarian Systems was adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. It is six years since the fall of the totalitarian regime in Serbia. It is three years since our country joined the Council of Europe. Each of these anniversaries should be understood as a serious warning that it is high time we passed a law that would regulate the treatment of dossiers of secret services and do something really important for further democratic transition of Serbia and its reputation in international relations.
Rodoljub Sabic, Information Commissioner
