The Washington Post - 02.11.2019

A8 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2 , 2019

The World

BOLIVIA

Violence erupts near

presidential palace

Police in La Paz, Bolivia, fired
tear gas and rubber bullets at
protesters marching toward the
presidential palace early Friday
as tensions over a disputed
election escalated.
Masked demonstrators set fire
to barricades and threw tear gas
back at police lines during the
predawn clashes.
The protesters oppose Bolivian
President Evo Morales, who
obtained just enough support —
according to official results — to
secure victory in the first round
of the Oct. 20 presidential
election.
The opposition alleges that the
outcome was rigged to enable
Morales to avoid a runoff; the
president denies wrongdoing
and has accused the opposition
of trying to stage a coup.
— Associated Press

INDIA

Schools in New Delhi

close because of smog

An expert panel in India’s
capital declared a health
emergency Friday because of the
air pollution choking the city,
with authorities ordering schools

closed until Tuesday.

The Supreme Court-appointed

panel is also temporarily banning

construction in the New Delhi

region to control dust in the air.

Air pollution in New Delhi

generally peaks around Nov. 1

because of a combination of

smog from fireworks from a

Hindu festival and smoke from

the burning of farm fields in the

neighboring states.

The air quality index reading

at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi

for pollution particles in the air

reached nine times the

recommended World Health

Organization level Friday. At

such levels, people are advised to

avoid all outdoor exertion.

— Associated Press

CHILE

Visitors are canceling

trips amid protests

Chile’s tourism industry is

feeling the effects amid violent

protests that have rocked

Santiago, the capital, since last

month, with hotel reservations

down by half and many people

canceling trips after the country

canceled two major summits.

The hit underscores the wider

effect of the chaos that has

gripped the South American

nation for almost two weeks,

since protests over a hike in

metro fares spun out of control,

spurring riots, arson and looting

that have left at least 18 dead.

“We won’t be able to endure

much more of this; the losses are

enormous,” said Ivan Marambio,

a manager at the Principado

hotel chain in Santiago. “All the

hotels are practically empty,” he

added, referring to the central

area near Plaza Italia, where

many of the protests have been.

The effect to tourism-related

businesses has spread.

Demonstrators say they have

no intention of letting up,

although the streets have calmed

somewhat since a long holiday

weekend began Thursday.

Chilean President Sebastián

Piñera, who axed a third of his

cabinet this week as he

scrambled to appease protesters,

also pulled the plug on plans to

hold two global meetings that

were set to take place in Chile —

the APEC leaders’ summit this

month, and the COP25 climate

conference in December.

— Reuters

Lebanese man sentenced to

death in mosque bombing: A

Lebanese court has sentenced a

man to death for twin car

bombings in 2013 that targeted

two mosques in the northern city

of Tripoli, killing 47 people, the

state-run National News Agency

reported Friday. NNA said the

Judicial Council sentenced

Youssef Diab to death Friday. The

near-simultaneous bombings

targeted Sunni mosques in

Lebanon’s second-largest city.

Police said at the time that the

bombings wounded some 300

others.

Algeria sees mass protest on

anniversary of independence

rising: More than 100,

Algerians, double the number

attending recent weekly protests,

marched Friday to demand a

purge of the ruling hierarchy and

an end to military involvement in

politics. The surge in numbers

came after opposition calls on

social media for a big

demonstration to mark the

anniversary of the 1954 uprising

against French rule.

Cypriot driver in trouble over

foot-stunt footage: Cypriot

police charged a man who

allegedly drove his heavy vehicle

on a main highway with only his

feet on the wheel and live-

streamed footage of the stunt.

Police said Friday that they

managed to identify the 43-year-

old man from the video, which

was shown on social media. He

was charged with reckless and

dangerous driving and driving

without the use of his hands, and

released.

— From news services

DIGEST

LEGNAN KOULA/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

A man visits a grave at the Williamsville cemetery in Abidjan, Ivory

Coast, during All Saints’ Day on Friday. Each year, All Saints’ Day

moves people in different parishes to visit cemeteries to deposit

wreaths and flowers on the resting places of their late loved ones.

Some use All Saints’ Day for prayers to God and to all the saints

recognized by the Christian church.

BY LOVEDAY MORRIS

IN BERLIN

In the aftermath of the fall of
the Berlin Wall 30 years ago, East
Germany’s secret police frantical-
ly tried to destroy millions of
documents that laid bare the as-
tounding reach of mass surveil-
lance used to keep an iron grip on
citizens.
As shredders that were avail-
able jammed or broke down, Stasi
officers resorted to tearing the
documents by hand, stuffing
them into bags to later be burned
or pulped. But the effort came to a
premature halt when citizens
groups stormed and occupied
Stasi offices to preserve the evi-
dence.
Three decades later, in the
same rooms behind the forebod-
ing gray facade of the former Stasi
headquarters, Barbara Poenisch
and nine fellow archivists are
trying to piece those documents,
and the history, back together.
Poenisch calls it “a big puzzle
game.” But at the current rate,
there are still decades of work
ahead.
The archivists have recon-
structed more than 1.5 million
pages contained in 500 sacks over
the past 20 years. There are still
around 15,500 more bags to go,
stored in Berlin and sites in east-
ern Germany.
A single sack can take an archi-
vist as long as a year and a half to
reconstruct, depending on how
finely the documents are torn.
Attempts to speed up the process
with digital technology have
stalled.
The painstaking work, per-
formed by hand, continues amid
controversy over the future of the
Stasi files.
The German parliament voted
this fall to transfer control of the
files to the Federal Archives, with
promises to invest in preserva-
tion and digitalization. Some his-
torians and former regime oppo-
nents have criticized the move,
saying it is an attempt to draw a
line under history and raising
concerns that files will become
less accessible.
Every German has the right to
view the records that the Ministry
for State Security, as the Stasi was
officially known, gathered on
them. More than 3 million indi-
viduals have applied to do so.
The agency used tens of thou-
sands of employees and a vast
web of informants to monitor
every facet of society, causing
many East Germans to live in
terror. It kept files on 5.6 million
people.
Reconstructed pages from the

Stasi files have shed light on the

agency’s investigations into a

Nazi war criminal and into the

peace networks in both East and

West Germany.

For Poenisch it’s a more per-

sonal document that sticks in her

mind: a letter from a mother who

pleaded to authorities to release

her jailed son.

Poenisch spreads out paper

fragments on a table. The sack

she’s been working on is from the

Abteilung N, responsible for com-

munication within the state ap-

paratus and with friendly coun-

tries.

A memo from Oct. 1, 1986,

reports that the political situa-

tion in East Germany is “calm and

stable.... There have been no

significant events in either the

economy or transport sector.”

Another memo, from April of

the same year, outlines a long-

term plan for the Stasi to keep up

with technological advances. The

goal is to achieve a “uniform,

integrated digital intelligence

network beyond year 2000.”

For the year 2019, the project to

reconstitute the documents is

surprisingly low-tech.

There’s precedent for reconsti-

tuting shredded documents. In

the mid-1980s, Iran pieced to-

gether and published intelligence

reports and operational accounts

that had been put through a

shredder as Iranian militant stu-

dents seized control of the U.S.

Embassy in Tehran.

More recently, programmers in

California have promoted soft-

ware that can do what the Irani-

ans were thought to have done by

hand.

But the Stasi project does not

have the technology to deal with

shredded material, said Ute

Michalsky, the head of the recon-

struction department.

An “E-puzzler” software pro-

gram, developed by researchers

at Berlin’s Fraunhofer Institute,

had sounded promising. It was

supposed to match scanned frag-

ments together based on paper

color, fonts, shapes and other

details. But it turned out to be

more time-consuming than the

manual effort and has not been

used for the past two years.

The German government has

dedicated 2 million euros to en-

hance the scan technology.

The archivists say they don’t

bother trying to piece together

material torn into more than

eight pieces, even though they

may be those the Stasi were more

keen to hide.

“I sometimes have the feeling

that they knew exactly what to

tear up,” Poenisch said. “Unim-

portant things only get a single

tear, but important things: the

more important, the smaller the

pieces.”

Poenisch says the laborious

work doesn’t get dull.

“The responsibility is high,”

she said. “Every document could

be important.”

[email protected]

William Glucroft in Berlin contributed

to this report.

Piecing together unsolved German Stasi puzzles

Decades after the Berlin Wall came down, archivists are still investigating documents from the state’s secret police

SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES

Thousands of sacks of hand-shredded Stasi documents are stored at a facility in Magdeburg, Germany. In the past 20 years, archivists have reconstructed more than

1.5 million pages from 500 sacks. Technology intended to speed up the process hasn’t helped, so there’s still 15,500 sacks of documents remaining.

REUTERS

moscow — A law known as the
“sovereign Internet” bill came into
force Friday in Russia, tightening
state control over the global net-
work, which free-speech activists
say will strengthen government
oversight of the country’s cyber-
space.
The legislation aims to route

Russian Web traffic and data

through points controlled by state

authorities and to build a national

Domain Name System to allow the

Internet to continue working even

if Russia is cut off from foreign

infrastructure.

The bill’s authors have said that

the measures are needed to de-

fend Russia after the United States

adopted what they described as

aggressive new cybersecurity pol-

icies last year.

“The law is in line with the

tendency we’ve been observing

over the past seven years,” said

Sarkis Darbinyan of Roskomsvo-

boda, a group that fights censor-

ship on the Internet and promotes

freedom of information. “This is

the movement towards strict reg-

ulation of the Internet space,

which scares the authorities.”

In recent years, Russian author-

ities have adopted rules, including

stricter regulations on public pro-

tests, tightening their control over

society, and effectively giving

more powers to President Vladi-

mir Putin.

The Russian government

banned the Telegram instant mes-

saging service and moved last year

to block it, but the attempt failed,

and the service is still popular and

widely used among Russians.

The Digital Rights Center, a

group of Russian cyberlaw attor-

neys, also said that the testing of the

“sovereign Internet” law has not

been successful so far because of

technical challenges.

[email protected]

Russian ‘sovereign Internet’

law has activists crying foul