Emigre Appeal Fuels Macedonian Census Muddle

Macedonia's census commission has called for ethnic Albanians to reconsider an appeal to Albanians who have been absent for years to come home and take part in the autumn census. 

The census is due to take place from October 1 to 15.

“Those who have been living abroad for more than 12 months will not be taken to account during the census,” Vesna Janevska, head of the Census Commission, warned.

She said that local NGOs who were trying to mobilize Albanian emigres in this fashion had been “misinformed” about who could take part in the head count.

Janevska said that according to the rules of the European Statistical Agency, EUROSTAT, citizens with the right to stay for over a year in other countries should register there.

She made it clear that this did not mean that such citizens were in danger of losing their Macedonian citizenship.

On Sunday, a representative of the Association of Albanian NGOs in Macedonia, KOSH, told the Macedonian based Iliria News Agency, INA that everyone needed to get back to Macedonia for the count.

“We call on all immigrants to come home and use their right to register because this is a historic moment,” the unnamed official was quoted as saying. He added that this especially applied “to those who have not visited Macedonia for years”.

Another NGO, the Organization for Regional Cooperation and European Integration, OBRIE, also urged ethnic Albanians to return home for the census, INA reported.

OBRIE said it regretted that the census had not taken place during the summer, when many Albanians who live abroad come back to their home country. However, “the census will be crucial” and that “Albanian diaspora should be active”, it added.

Macedonia has already postponed its head count once this year. It was originally planned for April. It was put off after an early general election was announced for June, amid increased political and ethnic tension surrounding the logistics of a carrying out a census at the same time.

Last December, Macedonia’s two main ethnic Albanian opposition parties, the New Democracy and the Democratic Party of Albanians, announced that they would boycott the census unless it was postponed from April to July.

They said that they feared that a spring census would be abused to artificially lower the number of Albanians in the country. They also argued that many ethnic Albanians were absent from the country except for the summer when they return.

In February, Albanian and Turkish members of the Census Commission walked out of one of the census planning sessions in protest over the way the census forms would be collected.

They expressed dissatisfaction about the way that the ethnic Macedonian majority in the commission had elected census-takers and complained also of an absence of Turks and Albanians among census-takers in areas where these nationalities are dominant.

Macedonia’s last population census took place in 2002, one year after the signing of the 2001 Ohrid Peace Accord, which ended a short-lived armed conflict in the country between ethnic Albanian insurgents and the security forces.

The results of the census showed that 64 per cent of the population was Macedonian and 25 per cent were ethnic Albanian. Roma, Turks, Serbs and other minorities made up the rest.