The legacy of Enver Hoxha's dictatorship continues to poison Albanian politics - to turn a new page and heal the wounds, the government opened the archives of the infamous Sigurimi secret police, more than 25 years after the fall of communism.
"It should eradicate the evil that continues to poison Albanian society. It's like removing pus, a painful but inevitable surgical operation," said Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.
For four decades, until his death in 1985, Hoxha ruled with an iron fist, suppressing all opposition and isolating the country from any external influence.
In December 2016, an independent body was established in charge of guiding those who wish to investigate the fate of their loved ones or investigate the fate of others through the archive. According to Hina, the body is also authorized to issue "certificates of non-cooperation" with the communist regime, which is a requirement for any public office today.
During the reign of Hoxha, more than 100.000 people ended up in labor camps, 20.000 in prisons, around 6.000 were killed or disappeared.
In the archives of the Sigurimi, an instrument of Hoxha's tyranny, there are millions of pages of documents and tens of thousands of files.
The goal of opening the archives of the former secret police is to pacify the Albanian political scene, which is accused of collaborating with the Sigurimi, often without any evidence.
And proven cases, as reported by Hina, are very rare. In the 26 years since the fall of communism, only two politicians have publicly acknowledged their cooperation with the Sigurimi. Some politicians, those from lower positions, discreetly withdrew from public life after a campaign of this type was launched against them.
For more than 40 years, Irina Sallaku (84) has been trying to find out the fate of her husband Džaavit. He only knows that he was killed by the Sigurimi.
After Javit's disappearance, "I was sent to a labor camp together with my two daughters", says Irina. They spent 12 years there.
Irina is a Russian woman who met Javit in Leningrad, today's Saint Petersburg, where he studied. She came to Tirana with him.
After the split between Moscow and Tirana in 1961, which occurred because Hoxha did not agree with Khrushchev's policy of de-Stalinization, Albanian-Soviet couples became the object of regime paranoia.
One of the daughters of Irina and Džavit, Elena, found the indictment against her father, as well as three documents that talk about his execution. But each has a different date and it cannot be determined which one is correct. There is no trace of where he was buried.
"I don't hate anyone. I just want to know where the grave is so I can light a candle and cry," said Irina. He hopes to find the answer in the archives of the Sigurimi.
The opening of the archives took a long time because there was a lot of resistance.
"It hides many painful secrets for many Albanians," says Gentiana Sula, head of the body that takes care of it.
"With the opening, all speculations and manipulations should end," he adds.
And there are so many of them in political and public life that they make it impossible to see the past clearly.
But despite the opening of the Sigurimi archives, many questions are likely to remain unanswered.
"Many documents were destroyed during the transition, as well as later," said Kastriot Derviši, former head of the archives of the Ministry of the Interior. It was similar during the riots in 1997 and the anarchy that reigned in the country.
"It will not be easy to establish the truth, but it is important to reach it in order to reveal all the aspects of one of the most repressive regimes of the 20th century," concludes Kadare.
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