UN experts criticize Albania over failure to deliver justice for 6000 victims of communist regime
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TIRANA, Dec.13 – Experts from the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances which visited the country last week, have criticized Albania for failing to identify nearly 6,000 victims of the communist regime.
Five independent experts from United Nations were engaged in an eight-day fact-gathering mission in Albania, and urged Albania to "take a more comprehensive approach" and give the victims and their families the right to truth, justice, reparation and memory.
They said that the country must “turn the painful page of the past.”
"There have been some ad-hoc sporadic efforts to search for the missing, although none of these initiatives was undertaken as a part of a state comprehensive policy to cast light on the truth," the statement issued by the U.N. Working Group read.
However, experts called on Albania to not waste any more time and act fast on provide more reparations to families of the 6,000 victims.
"The full examination of identified burial sites cannot be postponed anymore. Meanwhile, instant measures to save and adequately protect the sites that are already identified should be undertaken," the statement reads.
Thousands of people have disappeared when the communist regime came to power in 1944 until its fall in 1991.
The UN experts said that justice over the enforced disappearances has not been delivered as Albania has not properly investigated or condemned the crimes of the communist regime.
"Investigative and prosecutorial bodies have taken no initiative to investigate and bring before justice the issue of enforced disappearances. Secondly, criminal offences over enforced disappearance were included in the criminal code only recently," the group added.
Houria Es-Slami who led the U.N. Working Group of the Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance said she hoped that the implementation of the justice reform and the establishment of an ad-hoc committee to open former secret police files will help deliver justice over the issue.
The report drafted by the experts will be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in September 2017.
The iron communist regime lasted for decades and collapsed in 1990, five years after the death of Albania’s great dictator, Enver Hoxha. During one of the grimiest times of the country’s history, political executions were common, and as a result at least 6,000 people—possibly as many as 25,000—were killed by the regime.
Albania ratified the international convention on enforced disappearances in 2007.