ANALYSIS: Poland's secret files to be opened with caution (07/23/00)

ANALYSIS

Poland's secret files to be opened with caution

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

PRAGUE - The Polish Parliament on June 8 appointed independent senator Leon Kieres as head of the National Remembrance Institute, which will make Communist-era secret police (Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa) files available to those persecuted by the Communist regime.

The institute was set up by a parliamentary bill passed in September 1998, approved once again in January 1999 following a presidential veto, and amended in March 1999. However, the institute's further activity was blocked by political wrangling over who would head it. Three former candidates failed to win the three-fifths majority that was required for appointment.

Mr. Kieres was approved by 279 votes from the Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS), the Freedom Union (UW) and the Peasant Party. The post-Communist Democratic Left Alliance abstained from voting. "I am pleased, above all, that I received support, or at least no opposition, from the Democratic Left Alliance. This is probably a good sign for myself and for the institute," Mr. Kieres commented after the vote.

Mr. Kieres said he will not be hasty in providing access to secret files. "We will be cautious, and providing access to the files will not take place quickly. I would sooner be liable to accusations of slowing down this process than bring about irreversible damage and harm through fast but chaotic activities. This would discredit not only me but also the entire institute," he noted.

Mr. Kieres stressed that one of his key and immediate tasks will be to organize the work of the institute's 10 branch and subsidiary offices, to revive the activities of the Main Commission for the Examination of of (both Nazi and Stalinist), Atrocities Committed Against the Polish Nation, a body subordinated to the institute, and to collect secret files that are now dispersed among several institutions.

The law on access to secret files stipulates that the institute may show personal files only to those "wronged" by the Communist regime. Mr. Kieres admitted that there are problems in interpreting precisely who was wronged by the Communist-era secret services. According to the broadest interpretation, which he supports, a "wronged person" is deemed to be every person who was under the surveillance of the special services of the Polish People's Republic.

Mr. Kieres says he is affiliated with the Solidarity trade union rather than with some of the political forces that evolved from the Solidarity movement. "I have never come to terms with the fact that the camp of the former Solidarity has divided. I have been a member of the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarity without a break since 1980. I feel comfortable in both the AWS and the UW. Since they are in one coalition, I see no hindrances to being the most coalition-oriented politician in all of Poland," PAP quoted Mr. Kieres as saying in one of the interviews that he gave before the AWS-UW coalition disintegrated.

Mr. Kieres said he will not be the first person to look into his personal file. He added that he will do this only after "everyone has an equal chance of access to his or her own materials."

"I myself do not know what I will find in my file. In 1983 I was told that it contains information that would be unpleasant for me, as regards the persons who put [that information] there. In any case, I do not know whether it is really my file, as I have not been shown the documents," Mr. Kieres noted.

Jan Maksymiuk is the Belarus, Ukraine and Poland specialist on the staff of RFE/RL Newsline.

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