Source: Blic
Three years ago, at almost exactly the same time, I published the following comment: “The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly adopted in 1996 on XXIII session the Resolution on Measures to Dismantle the Heritage of Former Totalitarian Communist Systems.
Clause 9 of this document of extreme importance for a breakthrough of the freedom of information to a forbidden area reads as follows: the Parliamentary Assembly welcomes the opening of secret service files for the public in certain former communist countries. It calls on all countries to enable the interested persons to access, on demand, the files kept of them by the former secret services.”
Nearly all the former socialist countries responded to this appeal of the Council of Europe. Sadly, Serbia has not. This year marks a whole decade since the adoption of the said Resolution of the CoE Parliamentary Assembly. And also six years since the toppling of the authoritarian regime in Serbia. And three years since the admission of our country to the Council of Europe. We should see each of these “jubilees” as a solemn reminder that it is high time we passed a relevant law governing the treatment of secret service files and thus make an important step both for international reputation of our country and for its further democratic transition.”
I published the text in quotation marks for the first time on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the CoE Resolution in November 2006. And again in November 2007. And also in November 2008. And the fact that it would probably also be a current issue next year, 13 years after the adoption of the CoE Resolution, is certainly not the reason for satisfaction, on the contrary. Particularly if we bear in mind the way in which the state attempts to “solve” the problem of files. The SIA has been delivering thousands of files to the Archive of Serbia for several years. It is commendable that in this way it expresses readiness to renounce monopoly on this “treasury” of information, but the shortcoming is that the public does not know by which criteria this delivery is performed or whether the transfer meets the standards of data protection and archival profession. What do we get by moving problems from one cellar to another? Isn't it obviously better to do what all the other countries did - to regulate this delicate field by relevant law? The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance
