THE NATION’S Memory Institute (ÚPN) has published the identities of 473 former agents of communist-era secret police, the ŠtB, on its website on April 24. The agents were active in Banská Bystrica branch of the police between 1975 and 1989. The published data contain their names, surnames and departments where they were working. Some profiles also contain a photo.
“There are the names of agents who are directly responsible for persecutions,” Ondrej Krajňák, chair of the ÚPN board, said, as quoted by the SITA newswire.
Upon request, the ÚPN will also allow people to see the personal files of specific agents.
The ÚPN continues in reconstructing the organisational structure of the ŠtB. The institute plans to complete publishing the profiles for the normalisation era by the end of the year with publishing the names of agents from Bratislava branch, as reported by SITA.
During normalisation, the ŠtB started to focus on prevention, rather than prosecution. In addition to the fight against Charter 77, an informal civic initiative in communist Czechoslovakia from 1977 to 1992, it concentrated on the Catholic Church and various sects, especially the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In the end of the 1980s the ŠtB agents focused on the youth and their activities. They, for example, monitored punk culture and rock concerts.
“People used to be intimidated, they were concerned about their families and children, studies,” said Marián Gula of ÚPN, as quoted by SITA.
The ÚPN has already published the lists of apartments owned by the ŠtB, where the agents were meeting with their collaborators or where the families of the agents lived when the agent lent the flat to his or her “colleagues”. The ÚPN databases contain reports about 177 flats, of which 17 were in Slovakia (eight in Bratislava, four in Košice, two in Prešov and one in Humenné, Tatranská Lomnica and Tatranská Kotlina), according to SITA.
Source: SITA
Compiled by Radka Minarechová from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
