New Macedonia Lustration Commission Resumes Collaborator Probe

Parliament on Thursday elected the new Lustration Commission team which will continue to be led by its old chief, lawyer Tome Adziev, and contain five members of the old team which was criticised by the opposition for allegedly blacklisting suspected Communist-era collaborators for political reasons.

The new commission was elected without the presence of opposition parties, which have refused to take up seats in parliament after the April general elections, claiming electoral fraud.

In its first five years, the state-run body combed over 29,000 personal files and discovered some 130 people who allegedly collaborated with the Yugoslav Communist-era police or ordered surveillance of others for ideological reasons.

In its second term, the 11-member body will have to check the remaining 20,000 files that are stored in the state archives and in other institutions, according to Adziev.

The new members of the commission are forestry engineer Igor Lazarovski, historian Sasko Janev , law expert Ristana Lalcevska, political science graduate Linko Bejzarovski and journalist Predrag Dimitrovski, while Asan Ljuma, the former director of the hospital in Tetovo, was appointed as its new deputy head.

Law expert Novica Veljanovski, political science expert Vecko Zdravevski, journalist Daut Dauti, and sociologist Spend Vinca remain members of the commission from its last mandate.

Macedonia is following in the steps of many former Communist states that have brought in lustration laws as a way to address past injustices stemming from politically-motivated prosecutions.

But ever since the commission started work in 2009, it has been marred by controversy. 

The opposition argues that it has been misused to target government critics...

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