Macedonia to Curb Fans' Offensive Chants

Macedonia plans to introduce fines for fans caught chanting racist slogans at football matches.

Fines will range from 500 to 750 euro for people caught using offensive language while those involved in fights at matches risk up to a year's jail, a Police Ministry source told Balkan insight on Thursday.

The draft should be submitted to parliament by the end of this month, the same source said. Current laws envisage no fines for chanting offensive words at matches.

Racially charged incidents at sports matches have picked up recently, straining the climate of tolerance between Macedonians and Albanians, who make up about a quarter of the population of about 2.1 million.

During the Men’s European Handball Championship in January in Serbia, when the Macedonian team was playing, Macedonian fans were heard chanting “Death to Shiptars!”  The term is a highly offensive word for Albanians.

Albanian fans replied by shouting “Kauri”, an offensive term for ethnic Macedonians, at several matches in the home basketball, handball and soccer leagues.

The last to complain about offensive chanting was the basketball team from Kumanovo. On Sunday, during their match with Lirija, an Albanian team from Skopje, Lirija fans shouted offensive words at them and threw small objects at players.

Ethnic tensions in Macedonia rose in January following a village carnival where local Macedonians donned masks that made fun of Muslim Albanians.

Later, in what seemed an act of retaliation, a church was set on fire in the ethnically mixed town of Struga and a Macedonian flag was torched.

Fear of retaliatory incidents prompted Macedonia's junior male handball team to reconsider their friendly visit to Kosovo this week. 

The team went only after receiving explicit guarantees for their safety from the Kosovo government.

In 2001 Macedonia suffered a short-lived armed conflict between the security forces and ethnic Albanian rebels. The hostilities ended with the signing of a peace deal that same year that granted greater rights to the country’s Albanians.

Many of the most charged ethnic incidents in sport have taken place in the Albanian stronghold of Tetovo, in western Macedonia, where sporting rivalry between two local soccer clubs, Teteks and Shkendija, has assumed an ethnic dimension.

Shefik Bajrami, police commander in Tetovo, says police in the town last year filed charges against 20 people for causing fights at matches between these two teams.

Teteks is supported by Macedonians and Skhendia is cheered by the Albanians. “These incidents wreak havoc with ethnic relations,” he says.