Macedonia Secretive About Detainee Treatment

Velija Ramkovski has been in detention for over a year

Macedonia's Helsinki Committee for Human Rights complains that it has been refused access to the country's prisons to check allegations of inhumane treatment of detainees.

The human rights watchdog says the authorities have been systematically denying them entrance.

“We are particularly concerned about the authorities’ lack of transparency,” Gordan Kalajdziev, the head of the Committee, told Balkan Insight.

He explained that over the past year, the authorities “on several occasions did not allow us, as well as other non-governmental organisations, to visit prisons in [relation to] several cases”.

One high profile case where the committee says they face an institutional wall is the detention of the local media mogul Velija Ramkovski and his associates and family members.

After his arrest in late December 2010 together with 13 other people, Ramkovski is currently standing trial for financial crimes, including tax evasion and money laundering. Last Friday Ramkovski, his daughter and six of the originally detained marked one year in detention in Skopje's Shutka prison.

The Helsinki Committee asked for permission to check Shutka in January following media reports that detainees in the case had been treated inhumanely. Unconfirmed reports then said that pregnant and sick detainees were kept in isolation, in dark cells with insufficient heating.

Thе Committee then told Balkan Insight they were denied entry with the explanation that they can only visit prisoners, i.e. those who have received a sentence, but not detainees.

On February 3 one of the women related to the case suffered a miscarriage while in detention. This prompted the court to allow her and several other people to be held under house arrest. The authorities denied any responsibility for the miscarriage.

Wednesday’s opposition protest before the Skopje court

The Helsinki Committee says it has no way of confirming the accuracy of recent media reports that some of the detainees in the case are seriously sick.

Unconfirmed reports this month say that one of the people still in detention was recently operated for a tumor and another was diagnosed with asthma.

The investigative court responsible for ordering the detention has insisted that everything is run according to the law. The court says that the reason for the detention is the concern that the defendants might flee if released.

At a small rally before the Skopje penal court on Wednesday, Macedonian opposition parties asked for the immediate release of Ramkovski and the others in the case, insisting that they have been kept behind bars for far too long without a viable reason.

“We appeal to the human aspect of the detention for women, parents of minor children and sick people. The Macedonian judiciary has no history of people accused of financial crimes being held in detention for so long,” Lence Nikolovska, an independent legislator and part of the opposition bloc, said at the rally.

Ramkovski was the owner of the now defunct A1 TV before it closed this summer due to a large debt. Prior to shutting its doors, A1 was by far the most watched national TV and the loudest pro-opposition media outlet.
 
The closing of A1 and of three other daily newspapers, also owned by Ramkovski, were widely attributed to government pressure.

The center right government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski has rebuffed all such allegations.