Friðhelgi fyrir snuðrara og uppljóstrara?

Þau eru orðin allnokkur árin síðan járntjaldið féll.  Margt hefur breyst, flest til batnaðar en víða hefur þó í raun aldrei verið gerð upp ógnarárin sem voru undir sósíalismanum.

Eitt alvarlegast "ránið" sem fór fram undir stjórn sósíalistana var á traustinu.  Þeir rændu almenning trausti á vinu sínum, fjölskyldu sinni, vinnufélögum sínum, það vissi enginn hverjum mátti treysta, uppljóstrarar voru allstaðar.  Leyniþjónusturnar í þessum ríkjum höfðu starfslíð sem talið var í tugum ef ekki hundruðum þúsunda.

Vissulega hefur verið flett ofan af mörgum þeirra, en þetta er þó ennþá viðkæmt mál. Ég rakst til dæmis nýlega á grein í Der Spiegel þar sem fyrrverandi uppljóstrari fékk sett lögbann á að fyrrverandi fórnarlamb hans mætti nafngreina uppljóstrarann. 

Þetta fékk mig til að hugsa.

Hver er réttur uppljóstrarana og hver er réttur fórnarlambanna?

Hvernig er hægt að meina einhverjum um að nefna nafnið á þeim sem sveik hann og njósnaði um hann á vegum yfirvalda?

Auðvitað er ekki það sama að hafa unnið fyrir STASI og að hafa unnið fyrir STASI, ástæðurnar fyrir samavinnunni voru margar og misjafnar, sumir gengu glaðir til verks, aðrir voru þvingaðir eða fengnir til þess með hótunum.

En hlýtur ekki sannleikurinn að vera rétthærri en svo að það sé hægt að setja lögbann á hann? 

Það verður fróðlegt að heyra hver niðurstaðan í þessu máli verður, og hvernig Þjóðverjar ætla sér að taka á þessu, hvernig þeir ætla að meðhöndla söguna.

En hér að neðan má lesa nokkrar glefsur úr greininni á Spiegel.

"The East German secret police may have disbanded long ago, but fear of former Stasi members lives on. A court is about to decide whether a former Stasi informant can be outed in public. The answer will say a lot about how the country deals with its past."

"Kiessling, 57, is mayor of Reichenbach in Saxony's Vogtland region and believes it is time for Germans to be showing their faces once again. "Why," he asks, standing next to the sculpture, "did we take to the streets in 1989?"

The citizens of Reichenbach haven't been this upset in a long time, says Kiessling. He too is outraged over a story that began in his council chamber and triggered a debate in faraway Berlin over how to go on dealing with the history of East Germany. Like in some didactic play by Bertolt Brecht, Reichenbach has become the stage for events that show how injustice survives -- and how history doesn't just end.

The controversy centers around a pastor who publicly identified a former informant of the Stasi, the secret police of the communist regime of East Germany. The informant obtained a temporary court injunction preventing his name from being published, and a court is expected to rule on Tuesday whether to uphold the injunction or to lift it.

If the former Stasi informant prevails, the case will have serious repercussions for the way Germany handles the history of the communist German Democratic Republic, which collapsed with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, warns Marianne Birthler, the federal commissioner in charge of managing the Stasi's archives.

Wolfgang Thierse, a politician from the Social Democratic Party, says: "We must be able to name names, in the truest sense of the word." But isn't someone who was an informant for many years, and whose actions happened almost 20 years ago, entitled to a statute of limitations of sorts?"

"The Stasi left their mark on Käbisch, who seemed nervous. His eyes constantly dart about as if his tormentors were still after him. Together with a group of students, he organized an exhibition titled "Christian Activities in East Germany," which was to be opened in the town hall on that day. Käbisch, 64, stood at the front of the room next to a video projector. He projected one image after another onto the wall, including one of a Stasi informant known as "Schubert." The man's real name was also in full view on the image.

When the presentation and discussion ended, an amiable man walked up to the mayor and told him that he was the informant, "Schubert." The 46-year-old man, identified merely as S., also apparently told Kiessling later that many former Stasi employees had been in the room. "It was eerie," says Kiessling, still taken aback by the self-confidence with which the former informant had approached him.

The incident in the town hall was only the beginning. On March 7, Kiessling received a temporary injunction order from the Zwickau district court. The court had ruled to temporarily prohibit all public mention of the former informant's name. A final decision is still pending. Meanwhile, Käbisch had to remove the relevant part of his exhibit, which, as the court saw it, "was suited, as a reference complete with personal data, to harm the reputation and good name of the plaintiff in the public eye, essentially pillorying the plaintiff."

"Schubert," the former informant, is represented by Thomas Höllrich, a lawyer and local Left Party politician. Höllrich has complained about a pogrom-like mood in Reichenbach, a town small enough for everyone to know everyone else. A second former Stasi informant has also taken legal action against Käbisch's exhibition, and he too is represented by Höllrich."

"The former informant, whose full name SPIEGEL can't mention for legal reasons, has a successful small business in the village where several of his neighbors were victims of the Stasi. He is unavailable for comment. The man who admitted to being informant "Schubert" at the town hall in Reichenbach refuses to discuss any of the details of his case. For this reason, it is also impossible to ask him how someone who insists on his rights to privacy today feels about having violated the same kinds of rights in the past, and in a way that remains shocking even after a 20-year debate over the Stasi."

"One of "Schubert's" victims is prepared to talk though, perhaps because he no longer lives in the area. Thomas Singer went to school with the informant in Reichenbach. Today he is a teacher in the state of Brandenburg near Berlin. His Stasi file contains a number of reports by informant "Schubert."

In 1980, "Schubert" borrowed a small textbook into which Thomas Singer had written the lyrics of singers Bettina Wegner and Gerulf Pannach, both critics of East Germany. Shortly after "Schubert" had returned the booklet to him, Singer was called out of the classroom, put into a Stasi car and taken away to be interrogated. "I was afraid," Singer says today. Under pressure and concerned for his family, he later agreed to cooperate with the Stasi for a short time.

Following East Germany's peaceful revolution Singer, 46, chose a different path from that taken by his former classmates. Instead of hiding and fleeing the past, he checked the box marked "Informant" when filling out the relevant questionnaire, even though he was also a victim of the Stasi.

But his honesty meant he was disqualified from becoming a government official. "Basically, I have him to thank for that," says Singer. A teacher of German and history, he often talks to his students about the things that happened in East Germany.

Singer still remembers the story 28 years on. He wrote a moving letter to Pastor Käbisch, providing him with at least a small measure of acknowledgement. After all, Käbisch has been ridiculed often enough for continuing to attach importance to the Stasi question.