Lustration

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall three decades ago, a host of eastern European states have passed laws designed to bar from public life those associated with rights violations under their former communist regimes, particularly members of the security apparatuses and their informants.

After criticism from Brussels, Macedonia is to officially end its much-disputed lustration process on January 1, but plans to keep banning anyone declared to be a former secret police collaborators from working in state institutions.

Following criticism from Brussels, Macedonia is preparing to end the controversial lustration process, aimed at rooting out former secret police collaborators, deeming it mission accomplished.

Tome Adziev, the head of Macedonia's Lustration Commission, the state office for rooting out former secret police collaborators, told BIRN that he rejected a recent European Commission report that pinpointed "serious shortcomings" in the process.

"It is based on insufficient data," Adziev said.

Bojan Kostres, the vice-president of the League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina, LSV, told BIRN that his party is planning to submit a motion to parliament to re-adopt the Law on Accountability for Human Rights Violations, known as the Lustration Law.

After 25 years of debate on the subject, Albania's parliament last week approved a law that partially lifts the veil of secrecy on Communist-era secret service files, creating a commission to handle requests for information.

The opposition released new covert tapes allegedly proving that a judge was named a secret police collaborator for political reasons and revealing government meddling in the lustration process.

Over 50 journalists staged a protest after Macedonia’s Lustration Commission declared that the editor-in-chief of weekly newspaper Fokus was a secret services informant in 1993.

The head of the Macedionia's Lustration Commission, Tome Adziev, said he has sent letters to various institutions informing them of their legal duty to sack people from public office if they have been declared informers, after a court this week upheld many of commission's disputed decisions.

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Katardziev, who was accused by the state Lustration Commission of spying on students on behalf of the Communist regime in the 1950s, denied the claims and insisted he was the one who was actually under police surveillance at the time.

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