How to deal with ex-informers

In an open letter, the Romanian-German writer Herta Müller recently criticised the Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) in Berlin for inviting as speakers Romanian intellectuals who worked for the communist secret service Securitate. The political scientist Vladimir Tismaneanu calls for the integration of the accused: "In no other country of Eastern Europe has there been such an obvious regrouping of the nomenclatura and such a vehement offensive against supporters of an open society as in Romania. A lustration would have solved this problem. ... But since things look different in reality we must decide what to do with the ex-informers. ... Do they have a moral right to participate in social institutions? ... The ICR programme is based on the rules of academic competition, not on political biographies. Of course, an informer past is repulsive to anyone with any sense of morality. But the ICR is not a court of morals. And Herta Müller might have taken a welcome and therapeutic step if she had asked the two ex-informers what they thought about using their position as cultural authorities to return to the leading ranks of public life."

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