My name is Sara Stepanjan. My father, Agop Stepanjan, was a musician of Armenian descent, a Bulgarian and Yugoslav citizen who lived in Slovenia and loved this country. In 1984, he and eight others were tried in a secret military trial in Ljubljana, ordered for political reasons by the Yugoslav regime, held without public knowledge, without real evidence, without justice. The Yugoslav secret service UDBA and military counterintelligence KOS had been looking for people to frame as Bulgarian spies. They found them mostly among Bulgarian artists and musicians living in Yugoslavia, and the Yugoslavs who befriended them.

My father was sentenced to 9 years in prison. They called him a spy. A terrorist. My mother was imprisoned too, no charges, no trial, just interrogations until she would confess to something she never did. Three children at home waiting.

This was not 1944. This was 1984. The operation was planned under direct order from Tito himself, beginning in 1979 — while he was still alive and in power. Six years of planning. Then the arrests. Then the secret trial. This was one of the last major international political trials of the  Yugoslav regime — and one of its last.

He was transferred through multiple Yugoslav prisons, including prisons in Serbia. He was formally rehabilitated on New Year’s Eve 2002 and died 19 days later, from the consequences of what was done to him. He never saw justice. He only saw a piece of paper saying he was innocent.

In 2014, my mother and I traveled to Belgrade to access the archives ourselves. After years of requests and bureaucratic silence, we were finally allowed inside. An armed soldier stood guard over us the entire time. We were afraid they would lock us up too. They showed us almost nothing. What we did see was the name of the secret operation that destroyed our family.

They called it “Tenis.”

That is all they gave us. A codename. No files, no documents, no explanation. Just proof that something is there, and that someone has decided we are not allowed to see it.

This is not just our story. From 1944 until the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991, OZNA, UDBA, KOS and all their legal successor organisations conducted decades of political persecution, fabricated trials, torture and assassinations across Yugoslavia. Millions of families across Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, North Macedonia, and the rest of the former Yugoslavia are asking the same question: what was done to us, and by whom? The answer is locked in Belgrade — and in the archives of all successor states of the former Yugoslavia.

The European Parliament has already called for these archives to be opened. Its 2025 report on Serbia’s EU accession explicitly demanded access to UDBA and KOS files and their return to the respective governments. Nothing has happened.

Serbia wants to join the European Union. But EU membership comes with obligations, and one of them is confronting the truth about the past.

We respectfully requests that the Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament urge the relevant EU institutions and the Republic of Serbia to take the following actions:
1. Immediate international oversight: The OZNA, UDBA, KOS and all their legal successor archives must be placed under immediate international oversight to prevent the destruction or alteration of documents pending full opening.
2. Full access for victims: Full and unconditional access to personal files must be granted to all victims and their families across all former Yugoslav republics — in every successor state, without conditions, fees, or armed supervision.
3. Accession conditionality: The opening of the OZNA, UDBA, KOS and all successor archives and the adoption of a comprehensive victims' rehabilitation law must be made a formal and binding condition of Serbia's EU accession, to be verified by the European Commission prior to accession — in line with Parliament's own calls in A10-0072/2025 on Serbia and A10-0075/2025 on Kosovo, both calling for the opening of the former Yugoslav archives across the region.
4. Formal recognition and just satisfaction: The suffering of all victims of OZNA, UDBA, KOS and all their legal successor organisations from 1944 until the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991, whose cases remain unresolved to this day, must be formally recognised — including full legal rehabilitation, access to personal files, and an official state apology — in line with the standards established after 1989 by Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, and
Hungary. All successor states of the former Yugoslavia must do the same.

We’re not asking for revenge. We’re asking for the truth.

The people who built that regime are gone or dying. The archives are not. They are the last witnesses. Protect them now, before they disappear too.

Sign this petition. Share it. Be the voice of all the families who lived through the same thing but never got to tell their story. Many of them still can’t.

Sara Stepanjan
Daughter of Agop Stepanjan, musician and political prisoner, and Cveta Stepanjan, political prisoner. Both innocent.
Agop Stepanjan politically rehabilitated: 31 December 2002