In an interview with Deutsche Welle, Jonila Godole, director of the Institute for Democracy, Media, and Culture (IDMC), has spoken about the opening of the dossiers related to the crimes of communism.
Among other, Godole spoke about an activity of the IDMC, entitled “Days of Remembrance,” which aimed to confront young people with the communist past. According to Godole, the “‘Days of Remembrance’ were initiated to bring the confrontation with the past to the center of the attention of society, as long as there remains no day that is recognized and accepted by everyone for the crimes and consequences of the communist regime.”
Our aim would be to make national and international experts in the field of remembrance sit down with each other and exchange their work and experience to acquaint the audience with the latest developments in the debate about school curricula, about the opening of dossiers, concrete project of interest groups, etc.
The confrontation with foreign experiences showed how much we are lagging in this process and how unprepared we are to speak the same language as other Eastern-European societies.
Even though there have been positive initiatives to rewrite historical textbooks, the way in which they have been rewritten remains problematic. Every institution tries to blame the other, so that in the end no one takes responsibility for the texts that the Albanian youth is learning with.
In reality we have a youth that is growing up with historical memory about the dictatorship.
Above all, governments have never been interested to draft a true policy that would support the uncovering of the past. This is our failure, which in fact should have been a duty that we have to the new generation.
The debates about the dossiers are positive and have to continue, even though we are currently in an absurd situation. Although since April 30, 2015, we have a law that mandates the opening of the dossiers, the appropriate authority still hasn’t been installed.
It is true that the dossiers have been used and overused by all government until now without ever being opened. And few have any hopes that they will be opened before the 2017 elections.
If these dossiers were to be opened next year, the budget for the authority should have been reserved in next year’s draft budget, but this is not yet the case.
