ROMANIA: Romania's prime minister has urged the secret service to withdraw its agents from the country's newsrooms after it admitted placing spies in major media organisations.
Calin Tariceanu made the demand amid a campaign by the Civic Media association to expose journalists who passed information to the dreaded Securitate of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was toppled in 1989.
"Tariceanu has demanded that the secret services should not have undercover officers in newsrooms," said spokeswoman Oana Marinescu, after intelligence agencies revealed that they maintained a network of "moles" in newspaper offices and television and radio stations.
Civic Media has sent a list of about 1,000 journalists to the National Council for the Study of the Security Archives, which in turn has already demanded from some reporters a full work history and their attendance at a special interview.
Failure to provide details of their work under communism, or to attend the interview, could result in immediate dismissal, the council warns.
The "Clean Voices" campaign has prompted several prominent journalists to admit spying on colleagues for the Securitate, which is believed to have used hundreds of thousands of informers to keep tabs on Romania's 23 million people.
A former BBC journalist Carol Sebastian admitted informing on his friend, poet Andrei Bodiu, after the Securitate threatened to reveal that he had made a fellow student from university days pregnant and had no intention of marrying her.
Sebastian told Romanian radio recently that his failure to admit his past role was "an indelible stain on my career and my life" and resigned from the national television station, even though Bodiu, who had read his Securitate file, said his friend had provided only relatively harmless information about him.
Romania is only now delving into the estimated 1.3 million Securitate files, following years of prevarication and obstruction by former communists who took power after the fall of Ceausescu and dominated politics for the following 15 years.
Only after they lost the 2004 elections did the archives start opening more quickly under pressure from a reformist government that wants to bring Romania into the EU next January.
"In Romania files are destroyed, hidden, burned and used to blackmail people," said leading journalist Cornel Nistorescu.
"They should just open all the files and there would be three days of mayhem, recriminations and that would be it."
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