The issue of national identity is taken seriously by Balkan people – including the least serious among them.
Macedonia Becoming More Intolerant, Sociologist
Skopje | 02 April 2009 |
Saturday's brawl
The loud shouts of “traitors” by the group that disrupted the architecture students` protest against the state plans to build a church in Skopje’s main square is an expression of growing intolerance towards people holding different opinions, Ilo Trajkovski told local Utrinski Vesnik daily on Wednesday.
“The clash is internal, among Macedonians that are supposedly (Orthodox) believers but more resemble religious fanatics and those who are supposedly atheists”, he says.
The protest dubbed “the first architecture uprising”, aimed at expressing discontent with government plans to build a church on one of the busiest pedestrian areas in the city centre, was prevented by a crowd of the church’s supporters, carrying flags and crosses.
Local media broadcast footage showing police passively observing the clash.
Those supporting the building of the church claimed they spontaneously decided to come to Skopje from towns across Macedonia. It remains unclear, however, who organised the buses that brought them to the capital or the numerous printed leaflets calling for the counter-demonstration.
Shortly afterwards the conservative VMRO DPMNE party leader and Prime Minister, Nikola Gruevski, said the students had been manipulated by the opposition Social Democrats while the Social Democrats responded with charges that the counter-protests were staged by VMRO.
Trajkovski says this trend of marking people as enemies of the nation is growing as the country stalls on its path to the EU, causing feelings of isolation among people. The trend, he says, is additionally fueled by the ongoing presidential and local election contest.
“But this wave is not going to calm down by itself,” Trajkovski forecasts. Only political leaders can play an influence in relaxing the tensions, he says.
The violence against the students was condemned by the outgoing President, Branko Crvenkovski, the State Ombudsman, various human rights NGOs and the ambassadors of the EU, the US and Britain, as directed against the basic democratic right of freedom of speech.
The incident is a “part of the internal conflict encouraged by the ruling parties”, Macedonia’s Helsinki Committee for Human Rights said.
Police blamed those who organized the student protest for not providing security and argued that because the counter-protest was spontaneous, they could not hold anyone responsible on the other side.
There were no mistakes in the police response to Saturday’s riots, the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.
Their internal analysis showed that the police had reacted correctly and had prevented a larger incident. They said the police had so far identified more than 20 persons involved in the brawl.
(Reported by Sinisa-Jakov Marusic)
2009-04-03 02:28:31