Sigurimi

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Logo of the Sigurimi with the euphemism: "For the people and with the people"

Sigurimi ( Albanian for "security"; officially: Drejtoria e Sigurimit të Shtetit , "Directorate of State Security") was Albania's secret police during the communist tyranny under Enver Hoxha from the end of the Second World War until the political upheaval in 1990/91.

Function and structure

The Sigurimi was founded by the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha immediately after the communist seizure of power in 1944 as the most important instrument of power in the one-party system and his personal rule.

"State security is the sharp and beloved weapon of our party, because it protects the interests of the people and our socialist state against internal and external enemies."

- Enver Hoxha

The State Security Directorate was part of the Interior Ministry and was therefore subordinate to the Interior Minister as the highest employer. A deputy minister of the interior was directly responsible for the activities of the Sigurimi, which was directly managed by a director. According to Stalinist tradition, Hoxha referred to the sigurimi as the elite and champion of communist society. His relatives enjoyed privileges compared to the rest of the population. In 1945 the force consisted of 5,000 uniformed armed forces; by 1989 their number grew to over 10,000 men. It is not known how many secret agents and informers worked for the Albanian secret service.

In each of the then 26 Albanian districts there was a district command located at the Department of Internal Affairs, which was technically subordinate to the headquarters in Tirana . In Sigurimi there were the following areas of activity, divided into three directorates: political control, censorship, documentation, prison camps, internal security troops, personal protection , counter-espionage and foreign intelligence .

As the largest structural unit with numerous departments, the First Direction served nominally for counter-espionage, but in reality to a far greater extent for political control; it monitored the ideological loyalty of all citizens. This directorate also organized the telephone monitoring. The Documentation Department collected all government files classified as secret, including statistics on the country's economic and social situation. The detention center department operated 14 major institutions across the country. The prison in Burrel was particularly notorious .

The second management ensured the "security of the management cadre", i. H. personal protection.

The members of the third directorate - the foreign intelligence - made up a large part of the staff employed in the Albanian embassies. Its field of operations also included organizations of Albanian emigrants in the western states, the agency of which the Sigurimi made a great effort to penetrate.

Contrary to its own propaganda, the sigurimi was used primarily to control its own population through means of surveillance, repression and terror. In contrast, the defense against enemy agents and the company's own foreign espionage played only a minor role. Secret service experts from various Western countries were of the opinion that no communist country had such a large secret police in relation to its population as Albania.

The methods of the Sigurimi were similar to those of other secret services in communist countries ( KGB , Securitate , Stasi , etc.). Like them, the Sigurimi maintained a dense network of informers, which made it possible to monitor the population completely. The Albanian secret police also have their own prisons and camps.

Internment in remote villages was a special form of oppression . Unpleasant people and political prisoners who had served their camp detention had to live in remote and underdeveloped regions, although outside of work they mostly had no contact with the local population. Family members of political prisoners were also sent to such places. The exiles were only allowed to leave these assigned places of residence with special permits. Even children born there were only rarely able to leave the villages - as a rule, they were also refused further education. Internment did not require a court ruling, but was carried out administratively by a commission under the leadership of the Deputy Interior Minister responsible for the Sigurimi, which allowed unlimited arbitrariness.

history

Early years

After the communists came to power, the sigurimi was first used against members of the old elite. Pre-war politicians, intellectuals, prostitutes and clergy from various religious communities were arrested, tortured and executed with or without the holding of show trials . Others were sentenced to long imprisonment and forced labor. Alleged espionage for foreign intelligence services and anti-Albanian agitation were the main allegations that were almost always brought against domestic opponents.

After the political break with Tito - Yugoslavia in 1948 and again after the break with the Soviet regime and the exit from the Warsaw Pact , until Enver Hoxha's death, the Sigurimi was mainly responsible for the elimination of internal party opponents of Hoxha and of persons who had been arbitrarily declared by him to be “ enemies of the party and the people ” based on the Stalinist model for reasons of power strategy . Thousands fell into the clutches of the Albanian secret service as supposed Yugoslav spies or simply as so-called Titoists or as agents of the KGB. This also affected the first Albanian interior minister after the war, Koçi Xoxe , who was also head of the Sigurimi. He belonged to the pro-Yugoslav faction of the Communist Party and was Hoxha's rival. In 1949 he was arrested, sentenced to death in a secret trial and hanged .

1970-1991

A Sigurimi boat in
Saranda in 1991

Further waves of purges, which led to executions and long prison sentences for leading party members, began in 1973 in the cultural and media sector ( Todi Lubonja , Fadil Paçrami ), then the leadership of the armed forces under the previously particularly influential Beqir Balluku , and later the economic management with the Politburo members Koço Theodhosi and Abdyl Këllezi and Foreign Trade Minister Kiço Ngjela , and finally - after the suicide of Hoxha's long-time comrade in arms , Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu and his posthumous declaration as the enemy and agent of several secret services - the head of Sigurimi himself in 1983. The successors of Koçi Xoxes as Interior Minister, the long-time Politburo member Kadri Hazbiu and Feçor Shehu , who had not long since risen from the Sigurimichef to Minister of the Interior, thus also came to a violent end. Only the last Minister of the Interior under Hoxha and Alia, Hekuran Isai , under whose leadership his predecessors were liquidated as alleged polyagents, survived the dictatorship.

The permanent terror of the secret service apparatus continued with undiminished severity during Hoxha's lifetime. It was only after Hoxha's death in 1985 that the pressure on the population was reduced somewhat under his successor Ramiz Alia . The secret service could no longer stop the resistance against the regime, which grew in 1990. After the victory of the democratic revolution, the Sigurimi was transformed into the successor organization SHIK .

Work-up

A scientific discussion of the history of the sigurimi has not taken place in Albania to this day. There is hardly any work on this abroad either. A large part of the secret service files were already disposed of during the fall of the Wall in winter 1990/91, others were lost in the 1997 unrest as a result of the " lottery uprising ". The social discussion about the crimes of the communist secret service was and is difficult in Albania. There was no civil rights movement in Albania that would have called for this, the Association of Victims of Political Violence has too few allies in the political parties. After all, since 1990 the current political and economic problems in Albania have always been so serious that the majority considered dealing with the painful recent past to be of secondary importance. In addition, it must be assumed that the involvement of part of today's political caste in the machinations of the Sigurimi curbs interest in disclosure of the remaining documents.

It is unknown how many people fell victim to the Sigurimi terror. It is estimated that over 7,000 fatalities and more than 100,000 people were incarcerated.

On April 30, 2015, the Albanian parliament passed a law to open the files of the secret service to all citizens of the country.

In 2016, the "Authority for Information on the Documents of the Former State Security" ( Albanian  Autoritetit për Informimin mbi Dosjet e Sigurimit të Shtetit ) was founded. Its director Gentiana Sula comes from a persecuted family. The office is to digitize the files and give the persecuted insight into the Sigurimi files. According to them, 212,000 files with 30 million pages and 250,000 audio documents were created in the 55 years of existence of the Sigurimi. According to a parliamentary study from 1998, a total of 33% of all Albanians were politically persecuted.

Sacrifice of the Sigurimi

It is estimated that around 6000 people were executed and 17,000 imprisoned in Albania under the communist regime.

Long sentences served among many others:

literature

  • Pjeter Arbnori: Martirët e rinj në Shqiperi. 10300 ditë e net në burgjet komuniste. Enti Botues pole graphic "Gjergj Fishta", Tirana 2004, ISBN 99927-984-0-8 .
  • Pjeter Arbnori: Lettre de prison. sn, Tirana 1995.
  • Kastriot Dervishi: Sigurimi i Shtetit. 1944-1991; historia e policisë politike të regjimit komunist , Shtëpia Botuese 55, Tirana 2012, ISBN 978-99943-56-09-6
  • Agim Musta: Burgjet e shtetit burg. = Prisons of the prison state. Botimet Toena, Tirana 2000, ISBN 99927-1-358-5 (bilingual).
  • Agim Musta: Gjëmat e komunizmit në Shqipëri. Geer, Tirana 2001, ISBN 99927-753-8-6 .
  • Anita Niegelhell, Gabriele Ponisch: We are always on fire. Reports of former political prisoners in communist Albania , Albanological Studies, Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2001, ISBN 978-3-205-99290-5 , at Google Books
  • James O'Donnell: Albania's Sigurimi: The Ultimate Agents of Social Control. In: Problems of Post-Communism. Vol. 42, no. 6, November / December 1995, ISSN  1075-8216 , pp. 18-22.
  • Philip E. Wynn: Secret Police (Sigurimi) . In: Bernard A. Cook (Ed.): Europe since 1945. An encyclopedia. Volume 1: A - J. Garland Publishing, New York NY 2001, ISBN 0-8153-4057-5 , pp. 24f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christiane Jaenicke: Albania: a country portrait . 1st edition. Ch.links, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-96289-043-8 , pp. 52 .
  2. - Announcement on the Parliament's website ( memento of the original from May 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.parlament.al
  3. Gentiana Sula do të udhëheqi informimin për Dosjet e-ish Sigurimit të Shtetit , RTSH , November 24, 2016
  4. ^ Emerging from the shadow of communism , Sabine Adler , Deutschlandfunk , August 19, 2017
  5. ^ Christiane Jaenicke: Albania: a country portrait . 1st edition. Ch.links, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-96289-043-8 , pp. 51 .