Ex-communist purge bumps up against EU values

A Lithuanian law serves as a litmus test for what punishments Europe will tolerate against former collaborators.

from the May 1, 2007 edition

Page 1 of 3

VILNIUS, Lithuania - When Kestutis Dziautas enrolled in Moscow's KGB college in 1985, he wasn't aware, he says, of the Soviet secret police's role in executing and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of fellow Lithuanians decades earlier. Likewise, he says, he didn't know that KGB agents were still the feared foot soldiers of a ruthless regime.

But neither his claim of naiveté, nor the fact that he spent only four months working for the KGB before the fall of communism, was enough to spare him: A 1999 law aimed at punishing and rooting out ex-KGB operatives like Mr. Dziautas banned them from a wide range of public- and private-sector jobs for 10 years.

So Dziautas and three comrades took their case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg – and won. In 2004 and 2005 verdicts, the court declared Lithuania's "KGB Act" a violation of the European Convention of Human Rights, specifically the right to work.

"I didn't kill anyone, I didn't deport anyone, I didn't commit genocide. I felt like a rabbit upon which they were experimenting, making an example out of me," says Dziautas, who says he was relegated to fishing and picking mushrooms.

Now, Lithuania is under mounting pressure from the Council of Europe to amend its law or face sanctions when the Council's Committee of Ministers reconvenes in October. The Lithuanian parliament is leery of how the issue, debated again in early April without resolution, may tarnish the reputation of one of the EU's newer members.

Cases like Dziautas's highlight the struggle Lithuania and others in Central and Eastern Europe face, years into the postcommunist transition: if and how to punish those who persecuted on behalf of a cruel dictatorship and how to make peace with the past and move forward.

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | Next Page