RIGHTS-SLOVAKIA: Communist Links Obstruct Probe into Violations

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ed Holt

BRATISLAVA, Dec 30 2001 (IPS) - Top Slovak politicians’ desire to hide links to the former communist regime is stopping investigations of human rights violations under communism, a former Interior Minister has claimed.

“In Slovakia nobody feels responsibility for what the regime did to people and many try to shake off their responsibility,” Ladislav Pittner, former Slovak Interior Minister and head of the Association of Political Prisoners told IPS.

“There’s a lack of courage and political will. Many of today’s elite, even the political one, fear that if these crimes were properly investigated, they’d get into trouble because many of them collaborated and were active parts of the communist system. Almost all of them have a skeleton in the cupboard.”

The former minister’s comments come just weeks after a Bratislava court handed a former secret police boss a suspended sentence for abuse of public office. It backs up recent comments from Czech justice officials that their own investigations are being hindered in Slovakia.

It also comes after revelations that many former Czechoslovak secret police agents still work in state bodies, some in possible contravention of a Council of Europe resolution.

On December 5 Alojz Lorenc, head of the StB secret police when the communists were ousted from power in Czechoslovakia in November 1989, was given a 15 month suspended sentence by a Bratislava military court. The court ruled he organised the illegal arrest and isolated detention of people at the time of the Velvet Revolution.

Lorenc was sentenced to four years in jail for the same crime by the Czechs in 1993, but following the split of Czechoslovakia on January 1 that same year he refused to leave Slovakia to serve the sentence in the Czech Republic.

After bringing the case to court in Slovakia seven years later a bitter row between Czech and Slovak justice officials broke out after the sentencing.

Slovak prosecutors, shocked at the leniency of the sentence, claimed they were hindered in bringing a stronger case against Lorenc because of a lack of cooperation from the Czech Office for the Investigation and Documentation of Communist Crimes (UDVZK).

Bohuslav Padrta, head of the Slovak military court prosecution team, said Czech investigators had shown a “negative and completely uninterested stance” towards co-operation on the case.

But the UDVZK questioned Slovak commitment to bringing to justice people suspected of human rights abuses during the communist regime. They claimed that as with other cases their offers of help with the Lorenc investigation were largely ignored and that on many other occasions Slovak officials have actually hindered their own investigations.

Deputy head of the UDVZK, Pavel Brta, said: “In 1995 we sent them all materials on the Lorenc case and offered them witness statements from a number of people. It’s as if the Slovak authorities are looking for a reason not to sentence Lorenc.”

Since the split of the two countries the Czech Republic’s efforts to bring former communist criminals to justice have outstripped Slovakia’s.

In December 2001, 166 people had been charged in the Czech Republic in connection with crimes under communism.

This included two high profile convictions of communist leaders for crimes stretching back to the 1968 occupation of the country by Warsaw Pact forces. Further 71 charges are either being heard or are waiting to be heard in courts.

In Slovakia only two cases have been brought to court – the one against Lorenc and another against Vasil Bilak, a prominent member of the communist party who supported the Russian-led occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

“The Czechs have achieved more. Just compare the two bodies which deal with communist crimes,” says Pittner. “The number of investigations shows the Czechs work harder on punishing communist leaders.”

The UDVZK has 100 employees. The Slovak office, under the auspices of the Justice Ministry, has two, with one extra Interior Ministry employee carrying out investigations.

Some ordinary Slovaks have questioned the will of senior politicians to address communist crimes. MPs from the former communist party and now part of the ruling coalition, the SDL, have been attacked for their attitude to communist crimes.

Many of them have argued that rather than deal with past crimes the current government should be using resources to bring today’s criminals to justice.

Slovak President Rudolf Schuster, a member of the communist hierarchy until the fall of the regime, has been constantly pressed on his past since taking office in summer 1999.

He has claimed he never believed in the regime and privately observed his Catholic faith despite the ban on communist party members having anything to do with religion.

But in contrast to Czech president Vaclav Havel, arguably the most famous communist dissident in Western eyes, Schuster has been largely quiet on punishing former communists.

Havel spoke out on the Lorenc trial, welcoming the guilty verdict and saying all communist crimes had to be punished. Schuster made no comment on the ruling.

He has also been silent on revelations just after the Lorenc trial that many StB agents still work in state bodies.

In mid December it was revealed in local media that many members of the former secret police still work in various ministries, the financial police, and especially the present Slovak secret service (SIS).

SIS head Vladimir Mitro was forced to admit that almost 8 percent of his force consisted of former StB agents. Head of the Parliamentary Commission for Defence and Security Vladimir Palko said a significant number of former StB agents work at the Interior Ministry, while others hinted at large numbers in the Defence Ministry.

A combination of a lack of competent manpower to work in the first intelligence services of the post-communist Czechoslovakia, and a failure to clearly identify all the activities of every single StB agent, led to many keeping their jobs or being moved into other posts in state bodies, many politicians said.

“In the fight against crime there simply weren’t enough experienced people,” says Pittner, also imprisoned under the communist regime as a dissident, and Interior Minister in 1991 when many former StB agents were taken on in state bodies.

The role of former agents in state bodies has irked some politicians. Justice Minister Jan Carnogursky, himself imprisoned under the communist regime, has repeatedly called for files on former secret service men to be declassified.

He did so again this October, arguing that other former communist countries, such as the Czech Republic, had already done so, and citizens had a right to know where ex secret police were working.

He received support from some other politicians, but little from his own cabinet.

But failing to fully address the issue of where former communist agents are working, particularly their role in the Financial Police, part of the Interior Ministry, could cause Slovakia problems with senior European bodies.

A Council of Europe resolution on police forces states that any person who carried out acts violating human rights during his or her service in security services must not be employed in a police force. This would bring into question the position of some Financial Police employees who were members of the StB.

Present Interior Minister Ivan Simko has said there are plans to overhaul the structure of the Financial Police that may resolve the problem. He has rejected suggestions from people like Pittner that there are not enough experienced financial crime experts to fill the posts which ex StB agents currently hold.

“Twelve years after the revolution we should be able to find enough competent people who don’t have their hands tied to the old regime,” he says.