Let Out The Stink - Open The UDBA Archives

Here’s an interesting one for those of you interested in the former Yugoslavia space and communism in general. What about the massed archives of the former Yugoslav secret police (UDBA)?

Part of the problem with the former Yugoslavia space is that there has been no popular movement in favour of pluralism. All that happened as Yugoslavia broke up was a succession of populist moves led by the communist elites in regional capitals against Belgrade. Insofar as the masses were mobilised, it was on an anti-Serb ‘nationalist’ basis – “Let’s break from Belgrade and we’ll be free!” If there were in those protests voices calling for an end to communist rule, they were at best muted.

This issue arose in Sarajevo when I was there. The Izetbegovic Bosniac/Muslim elite who took over in Sarajevo were delighted to grab whatever they could of the localformer communist secret police archives and then use that material against their enemies. The idea of throwing open the archives and breaking the psychological grip of UDBA-isation was inconceivable to these people, even though all of them had been persecuted by UDBA themselves!

This is what I said on the subject in a speech to a gathering of Bosniac intellectuals in Sarajevo 1998:

Let me offer one more example of the Bosniac leadership sending an unhappy political signal to their fellow countrymen and to the international community.

During the Yugoslav period Mr Izetbegovic and thousands of other Bosnians were persecuted by the Yugoslav secret police. According to an article in Ljiljan the post-war Communist regime actually murdered tens of thousands of Yugoslav citizens. Having survived this persecution the Bosniac leadership might have decided to follow the shining example of President Havel in the Czech Republic and open up the secret police archives to full public scrutiny.

This would have dealt a massive blow in favour of freedom and democracy. Bosnia and Herzegovina would have set the rest of Europe an example of openness, making a clean break with the repressive past.

Yet what has happened? These secret police archives are not private property. They belong to the BH state, and hence to all Bosnian citizens. But these Yugoslav secret police archives are not public. No democratic accountability has been brought in. Those archives in Sarajevo are being controlled by a narrow unaccountable group of people for cynical and reactionary political purposes.

The current situation is a disgrace. It is high time these archives were made public or at least brought under normal democratic control.

Many of you here today were spied on by the Yugoslav secret police simply for believing in God or for having liberal ideas. Why should you not see the lies and distortions they wrote about you on your file?

You Bosniac intellectuals here today will do your country a great service if you demand publicly that this happen forthwith, and certainly before the September elections.

Result? Nothing.

Nor did the High Representative take up the issue – the OHR senior folk had no background in former Yugoslavia and did not see the point in bothering.

When I was Ambassador in Belgrade the Djukanovic elite in Montenegro were another fine case, shamefully rummaging around in the UDBA archives to drag up what they claimed to be incriminating material involving me from my first Yugoslav posting in 1981/84. Liars.

So what has happened in the absence of any opening up of these archives across the former Yugo-space? In each new country the ex-UDBA elite have prospered, largely unconcerned with any threat of transparency and accountability for what they did in the communist period and thereafter.

The good news? Surely EU processes have changed things for the better eg in Slovenia, now a full EU member?

Seems not. The archives have been declassified and opened to the public. But the public are not allowed to actually see them?

The Grumpy Hermit is on the case: