Czech Republic Publishes Ex-Agents List
Thursday March 20, 2003 6:00 PM
PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) - The Czech Interior Ministry on Thursday published a list of some 75,000 people identified as agents of the former communist secret police, the STB.
The 5,700-page list was posted on the ministry's Internet page and Czechs can consult it at six offices, four of them in the capital, Prague.
Since 1997, Czech citizens have been allowed to see their own police files, but not files held on other people. A new law that was adopted by the parliament last year gave them access to all STB files and ordered the Interior Ministry to publish the names of everyone listed as an agent.
``It should not harm too much the people listed,'' deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Zeman said at a news conference, adding that most of the people listed already were known to have collaborated with the STB.
A much larger, unofficial list of more than 100,000 agents was published by a former dissident in the early 1990s in then-Czechoslovakia.
The new law opens the files of Czech citizens only, Zeman said, explaining the discrepancy in the number of names published. He said the STB had records of some 30,000 Slovak agents.
Czechoslovakia split peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.
Zeman conceded that the unofficial list may have been more accurate as many files were destroyed by the STB shortly after the fall of communism in 1989.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2495626,00.html
