LOCAL PRESS

Vucic: EU membership Serbia’s strategic goal (RTS)

The Serbian government is determined to meet its goals in the process of EU integrations, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said in the conversation with the Head of the European Parliament delegation for Serbia Eduard Kukan, and repeated that the membership in the EU is Serbia’s strategic goal. Vucic has acquainted the delegation of the European Parliament with the reform measures that are aimed at boosting Serbia’s progress on the European course, and improving the investment climate. He has especially pointed to the significance of judiciary reforms. Kukan has said that he has great respect for the government’s dedication, and the Serbian Prime Minister himself, to the European course, while emphasizing that the European Parliament will support Serbia on its path.

Dacic, Gasic: New stage of relations with NATO (Tanjug)

Serbia entered a new stage of the relations with NATO by enforcement of the Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP), Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic and Defense Minister Bratislav Gasic said after the meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels. Our neutral stand is not brought into question by the plan, Dacic told reporters in the NATO headquarters. Dacic said that IPAP opens the possibility for cooperation between Serbia and NATO in many sectors, including science, public diplomacy and participation in international peacekeeping actions. He noted that NATO is important for Serbia both because of KFOR and support to the Brussels agreement. Dacic said that he received guarantees from Stoltenberg that no Kosovo armed forces will have access to northern Kosovo and added that previous NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen issued similar guarantees earlier.

Gasic said that thus we contributed to the building of military capacities for contribution to international peace and stability and to better cooperation with NATO member-states. Participation in Partnership for Peace is, for Serbia, an optimal framework for the realization of security goals and the promotion of defense capacities while maintaining military neutrality, stressed Gasic. He added that the Serbian Army and KFOR had excellent cooperation.

Gracanica: Unity of Serbs needed more than ever (Radio Serbia)

Representatives of all Serb majority municipalities in Kosovo and Metohija gathered at a rally in Gracanica, requested the urgent establishment of the Union of Serb Municipalities, as envisaged by the Brussels Agreement, saying that the unity of the Serb people is one of prerequisites for survival in this region. In addition to Serb representatives in the Kosovo executive authorities, the Head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric also attended the meeting, where key priorities of political action were determined in order to improve the difficult position of Serbs in the province. Djuric expressed satisfaction with the level of unity expressed at the gathering, which is actually a preparatory meeting for the formation of the Union of Serb Municipalities. He reminded that freedom, of which many Serbs are deprived, is the most important for the Serb community in Kosovo. “Freedom should continue to be our guiding principle, and not at the expense of anyone who lives in this area, but for the benefit of the Serbian people. We need unity and joint action more than ever,” Djuric said, adding that the state of Serbia stands by its people in the province and will share the burden of their fight. Kosovo Deputy Prime Minister Branimir Stojanovic said that the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija just want to live a normal life. “A decent life that we do not have today is our only guiding principle. The political failure of the Serbs would mean the disappearance of the Serb population in the region. We also want our neighbors to live a decent life, so that everyone would be better off,” said Stojanovic. Kosovo Minister for Local Self-Government Ljubomir Maric says that the Serbs are now determined to show strength, wisdom, will and perseverance in order to survive. “We have to demonstrate the ability to adapt to circumstances and fight for a better tomorrow,” he added. Former Kosovo minister Aleksandar Jablanovic says that unity is most important. “We know that our unity is backed by our most important and biggest ally – the Serbian government,’ said Jablanovic. He warned that the Union of Serb Municipalities is not only a project of the Serbs but of Albanians as well since the Albanian side has an obligation to implement it. Political representatives of the Kosovo Serbs said at the meeting in Gracanica that they expect the Kosovo government to show a constructive and serious approach and to implement the agreement. If this does not happen, the Serbs would not “rush” into the new arrangements, which could result in deterioration of the already poor situation of the Serb people in Kosovo and Metohija.

Drecun: Prosecution to also identify perpetrators of crimes against Serbs (Tanjug)

Serbian MP from the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) Milovan Drecun said in comment to the arrest of eight people suspected of war crimes against Muslims in Srebrenica, that the SNS wanted all the war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia investigated. “We welcome cooperation between the Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor and the Bosnian authorities on the said case, but we also regret that we cannot obtain enough information to show that the cooperation is not one-sided and that it is not solely about arresting Serbs suspected of war crimes,” he told reporters at the parliament. More than 3,260 Serbs were killed in Podrinje from 1992 to 1995 and those crimes have to be investigated and the culprits put on trial, he noted, calling on the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor to identify the culprits. It is extremely important for reconciliation, the prosperity and future of the region that all war crimes be investigated, he stressed. Drecun further said that the court in B&H since its formation in 2003 accused 256 Serbs, completed 135 trials, while 90 Serbs were convicted in The Hague to a total of 2,647 years in prison for war crimes, said Drecun.

REGIONAL PRESS

Decision signed on appointment of new FB&H government (Fena)

The President of the Federation of B&H (FB&H) Marinko Cavara and vice-presidents Melika Mahmutbegovic and Milan Dunovic signed a decision on the appointment of the new FB&H government, which will be headed by Fadil Novalic of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA).

Kebo lodges another report against Mahmuljin and Dzaferovic (Nezavisne)

The former vice-president of the FB&H Mirsad Kebo has lodged another report to the B&H Prosecutor’s Office against the retired general of the Army of B&H Sakib Mahmuljin and chairman of the B&H House of Representatives Sefik Dzaferovic on suspicion that they committed war crimes. The report was lodged over command responsibility for the murder of imprisoned Serbs in the Zenica district and illegal detention and torture in the camps Kamenica and Gostovic held by the “El Mujaheed” unit, as well as for illegal detention of Serbs in the prison in Zenica as hostages in exchange for two brothers of Sakib Mahmuljin. Kebo said that all data that he stated in the report are in the material that he had submitted to the Prosecution, which suspended the investigation. “The documentation clearly states who did what, and if something is missing let them ask citizens who are afraid to testify, because the police of the Zenica-Doboj Canton cannot establish whether the noted witnesses exist. One of them, Zaim Jasarevic, died in 2006. I discovered this and not the security organs in charge, because somebody doesn’t care about the truth,” said Kebo.

Brammertz: Prosecutors should prove to Serbs they are unbiased (Srna)

The ICTY Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz stated in Banja Luka that the prosecutors in Sarajevo have the responsibility to prove to associations of victims of war from Republika Srpska that their work is unbiased and independent. Asked whether reconciliation among peoples in B&H could be possible in the situation when nobody had been punished yet for the crimes committed against the Serbs in Kravica, Brammertz said he was aware that there was dissatisfaction among associations of victims of war in the Republika Srpska due to the lack of investigations in Sarajevo, and the lack of progress and prosecution of war crimes committed against the Serbs. “I encourage associations of victims of war from Republika Srpska to speak about this with prosecutors in Sarajevo,” Brammertz said following a meeting with representatives of associations of Serb victims of war.
INTERNATIONAL PRESS

Sutorina Crisis: Bosnia losing its closest neighbour, Montenegro (Journal of Turkish Weekly Op-Ed, by Hamdi Fırat Büyük, 18 March 2015)

The border crisis between Bosnia and Montenegro is deepening. After the Montenegrin President’s refusal to send a new ambassador to Sarajevo amid Bosnia’s territorial claims over the Sutorina region, which currently falls within the borders of Montenegro, the agreement which delineated the border between Bosnia and Montenegro has still yet to be ratified by the Bosnian Parliament.

Sutorina region and the border dispute

It has taken a Bosnian-Montenegrin commission over 6 years to draft the border agreement. Nonetheless, despite of the long-term absence of any opposition to the agreement within Bosnia, when Bosnia’s presidency finally sent the bill to the parliament, Bosnian politicians, academics and intellectuals entered harsh debate over the status of the disputed Sutorina region.

The dispute comes as a group of Bosnian academics, intellectuals and NGOs published a report a few months ago which claims that a short stretch of the Montenegrin coast and its surrounding areas, called Sutorina, legally belongs to Bosnia. The group argues there is strong evidence that the territory had been a part of Bosnia until World War II and that Sutorina is now a “de jure” Bosnian territory. Denis Becirovic, the MP who proposed a resolution on Sutorina to the Bosnian Parliament in January, said that the facts about this issue needed to be determined. “The task of the elected officials of this country is to take care of the interests of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” he said. He claimed that the Parliament will stand up for the country and its borders – albeit only in a peaceful and democratic manner, using legal instruments. The disputed area of Sutorina and its surrounding territories includes five villages as well as the region’s namesake, the river Sutorina. Most importantly, the disputed lands lie a few kilometres from the Montenegrin coastal town of Herceg Novi. If the territory were to be granted to Bosnia, it would give the country a second access point to the Adriatic Sea, thus supplementing the county’s 24-kilometre span of coastline seen in the area of Neum.

Good relations of Bosnia and Montenegro

Now, the dispute is discussed within a wider spectrum and it is assumed that the border dispute can easily trigger a new crisis in the Balkans, a region in which many already live under a fragile peace. Furthermore, amid the border dispute, Bosnia seems set to lose its closest neighbouring country, Montenegro, which extends its full support to Bosnia in almost all platforms, whether they be in relation to the EU, NATO, human rights violations of the Bosnian War or bilateral and multilateral relations in the region. Moreover, up until now, Montenegro was the only country in the region with which Bosnia had no problem. Yesterday in Ankara, Montenegro’s first post-independence minister of foreign affairs Miodrag Vlahovic, who is also president of the newly established opposition party the Montenegrin Democratic Union (CDU), delivered a speech entitled “Montenegro and the Balkans” at a conference jointly organized by the Ankara-based think-tank the Centre for Eurasian Studies (AVIM) and the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Ankara. Inevitably, Vlahovic expressed his opinions on Sutorina in parallel with Montenegro’s state policies. “Sutorina is Montenegrin and Sutorina belongs to Montenegro”, he said at the beginning of his speech. “I do not and cannot understand why Bosnia behaves like this despite having had no problem within the commission that prepared the agreement which delineated the border between Bosnia and Montenegro”, he continued. According to Vlahovic, Bosnia issued no written or spoken reservations on the border between Montenegro and Bosnia during the 6 years commission process. Considering this, he claims that the failure of the Bosnian Parliament to ratify the agreement based on claims to Sutorina is unexplainable and unacceptable. “Montenegro always supported Bosnia and Bosnia is a friend of Montenegro. I have personally visited Potocari Cemetary, Srebrenica on Nov 12, 2004, before travelling to Sarajevo for an official visit. I did not feel the need to wait for an organized commemoration ceremony to be held there and I am very proud I went in this way. Bosnia should ratify the agreement and abandon its claims on Sutorina”, he said, concluding his remarks on the issue.

Importance of Montenegrin support to Bosnia

Aside from Montenegro’s reaction to the Sutorina dispute, academics and researchers seem to have reached a consensus that the current crisis only works to worsen Bosnian-Montenegrin relations and will not work to the favour of Bosnia. Florian Bieber, a prominent scholar on the Balkans and director of the Centre for South East European Studies at the University of Graz, said that it does not make any sense why Bosnia is purposefully working to worsen its relations with Montenegro, the only neighbour with which it shares good relations. He further states that Bosnia’s claims to Sutorina are illusionary. Additionally, if Bosnia stands by its claims to Sutorina, the country may come to face new border disputes, not only with Montenegro, but also with other neighbouring countries. It could be predicted that Bosnia’s policy on the issue will actually backfire as the Sutorina dispute could ignite a fire that thaws the many frozen border disputes and overlapping territorial claims that already exist between Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia. Bosnia, which is a country that has experienced the worst types of crises and conflicts throughout the period of unrest and war in the Balkans, should avoid inciting a new crisis in the region, especially with its closest neighbour Montenegro. Beyond this, the country has been struggling with many internal problems since gaining independence. In this way, considering that the country is already having enough difficulties in simply holding itself together, there is no doubt that Bosnia has neither the energy nor the capacity to face the regional backlash that may arise as a consequence of its imprudent dealings with Montenegro. The Bosnian Parliament should immediately ratify the border delineation agreement, turn its attention to its own domestic issues and work to heal its damaged relations with Montenegro, which is a country that is simultaneously on good track with the EU and expectant to become a NATO member at the next NATO Summit in Poland. Bosnia should not and cannot put its good relations with Montenegro on the line, as doing so could also entail the loss of a vital partner that supports Bosnia’s future in the EU and NATO.

Djukanovic Reshuffles his Team in Montenegro (BIRN, by Dusica Tomovic, 18 March 2015)

The Montenegrin parliament approved Prime Minster Djukanovic’s reshuffled cabinet on Wednesday, although opposition parties voted against the new line-up. Parliament on Wednesday approved the new cabinet of Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, tasked with reviving the economy and leading Montenegro closer to NATO and EU membership. MPs from the ruling coalition voted in favour of new education, culture, health, justice and labour ministers. The opposition voted against the new cabinet. Djukanovic told parliament that the new members of the team would soon have the opportunity to show and prove they have both “optimism and knowledge”. He pledged that his new line-up would work to improve living standards for Montenegrins and secure dynamic economic growth. “Such optimism is based not only on political proclamations, but on real insight into what Montenegro’s resources are,” Djukanovic told parliament before the vote. The opposition criticized Djukanovic’s changes, claiming the new ministers had not been appointed for their knowledge and skills but for their loyalty to ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS, and Djukanovic personally. They also criticized the current economic policies, complaining of badly managed privatizations, suspicious foreign investment and soaring public debt. Under the changes, the current Labour Minister Predrag Boskovic becomes the new Minister of Education. Boskovic’s successor at Labour will be Zorica Kovacevic, a senior official of the DPS. The new Health Minister will be Budimir Segrt, director of the largest private hospital in the country, Meljine. In November, the previous minister, Miodrag Radunovic, resigned amid an outcry over a deadly infection in a hospital in the north of the country. A prominent writer, Pavle Goranovic, will be the new Culture Minster. He will take over a ministry that has been without a chief since last June when the former minister, Branislav Micunovic, became Montenegrin ambassador to Serbia. Djukanovic has appointed a new Justice Minister, a position that for years was occupied by one of his closest associates, Dusko Markovic. Zoran Pazin is currently Montenegro’s representative at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Markovic, a former longterm head of the Montenegrin secret service, will remain the Deputy Prime Minister responsible for the political system and internal and foreign policy. The government, formed in October 2012, consists of the DPS, the Social Democratic Party, the Liberal Party and and some smaller parties representing ethnic minorities.

UN rights office urges impartial investigation of Macedonia political figures (Jurist, by Julie Deisher-Edwards, 19 March 2015)

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) [official website] on Tuesday expressed deep concern at the ongoing political predicament surrounding the release of incriminating audio recordings of conversations between officials in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The content of the tapes raises concerns [press release] of election fraud, interference with the judiciary and mass surveillance. Opposition leader Zoran Zaev of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) [party website, in Macedonian] has released a number of audio recordings since February, implicating government officials in ethnically-motivated surveillance programs [BBC report], as well as politicians for the opposition party, journalists, and religious leaders. Recordings also indicate a scheme to manipulate voter registration records [AP report], and coerce government employees and other voters to back the ruling Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE) [party website, in Macedonian]. Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski has dismissed calls for a snap election [Reuters report] and a transitional government, claiming that the wire taps are the work of a foreign government colluding with Zaev to destabilize the country. The OHCHR urges the Macedonian authorities to launch an impartial investigation into all allegations, and to ensure the accountability of all wrongdoers, regardless of political affiliation. Tensions have escalated in Macedonia since its April 2014 elections [Reuters report], in which the Gruevski’s VMRO-DPMNE party again won the election, leading to Gruevski’s fourth consecutive term as prime minister amid allegations of fraud. Zaev was charged in January for attempting to overthrow the government [Agency Focus report, in Macedonian] with the aid of an unnamed foreign intelligence agency. In September, a Macedonian court found Zaev guilty of slandering Gruevski for claiming that Gruevski took a bribe in 2004 to facilitate a Serbian businessman’s purchase of a bank in Macedonia.

Posted in Paper Chase

Macedonia: Behind the Façade (Al Jazeera, by Glenn Ellis, 18 March 2015)

Macedonia’s government has been accused of wanting to rewrite the nation’s history along ethnically divisive lines. Its Albanian minority fear the possible consequences.

Against a background of increasing tension caused by a controversial inter-community murder case, the government’s opponents have also weighed in with allegations that conservative Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski has been behind a massive state surveillance and wire-tapping programme, aimed at suppressing dissent and clinging onto power.

So how did this very Balkan crisis begin and where will it lead? Filmmaker Glenn Ellis went to Macedonia to find out.

A FILMMAKER’S VIEW

I arrived in Macedonia in the dead of night, not knowing quite what to expect. The day I left England I had heard news reports referring to a coup attempt in the capital, Skopje. But on the short drive from the airport to my hotel I had seen no troops or roadblocks or even excessive police activity – in fact no sign of anything out of the ordinary. Next morning over breakfast I asked the waiter about the coup. “Coup? What coup?” was the reply. It was the perfect introduction to a country where little is as it first seems and where – so I would discover – the government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski has spent much of its nine years in office presiding over a distinctly Kafkaesque metamorphosis of Macedonia’s outwards appearance. If you have not heard much about the regional controversy this has caused, then that may in part be due to the stranglehold the administration has on the local media, which has seen the country sink 80 places in the Reporters Without Borders freedom list and allowed a truly strange rewriting of the history of this tiny, former Yugoslav republic. The change is physical as well as psychological. A short walk from my hotel, I came face to face with possibly the oddest collection of contemporary statuary in Europe. I say contemporary but the style is anything but: here pseudo-classical figures sit (mostly on horseback) cheek by jowl with social-realist effigies that could have been hewn in Stalinist Russia. The centre piece is a 100-foot high statue of Alexander the Great, which sits atop a plinth surrounded by carved warriors. It is all part of a project, called Skopje 2014, which is both the brainchild of the prime minister and the focus of a great deal of unhappiness. I have arranged to meet Ivana Dragshikj, a civic activist and one of a group known as the “Singing Skopjiens” who have been campaigning against Skopje 2014 in a novel way. “We sing as a protest,” she tells me, “because all of our other forms of protest were met with violent repression and threats of job loss, loss of positions at the university and things like that.” We pause by a 12-foot high gilded statue of the Greek god, Prometheus. It sits awkwardly in front of an imitation Brandenburg Gate complete with golden horses. Ivana’s disgust is obvious. “I would say that it’s ugly, that it’s insulting, it’s invasive and it’s repressive. If you talk to any people that have the minimum understanding of public space – what it should be and what it should do for the people – you will hear that many people do not walk past the monuments anymore, they don’t walk past this whole area because they really feel insulted, they walk with their heads down and that’s my own case, I don’t walk around this place anymore.” In fact, almost anywhere you turn in this part of the capital there is a new statue, usually pointing a sword or a spear at you and all – so I am told – designed to foster the impression that today’s Macedonians are descended from Alexander the Great and other giants of Hellenic civilisation.

Naturally I am eager to ask the Prime Minister about these extraordinary creations and the reasoning behind them, but I do not hold out much hope that he will talk to me. Apparently he rarely, if ever, gives interviews to independent journalists. I file the request anyway, but as I wait for a response I manage to speak to Artan Grubi, an MP and the Chief of Cabinet for the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), which has been a coalition partner in Gruevski’s government for the last seven years. Grubi tells me the DUI is the principal political representative of Macedonia’s Albanian minority, some 25 percent of the population. I find this strange, given the underlying ethnic tensions in the country – part of the story I am here to unravel – but I want to ask him first about the capital’s weird statuary. Suffice to say, he is not a fan.”When the project was being masterminded,” Grubi tells me, “I was the head of the largest Albanian civil society organisation – it was called Wake Up and at that time I was organising protests against the project because it was mono-ethnic, mono-religious, it did not represent all the citizens, did not represent the will of the citizens of the country and therefore it was completely unnecessary to be built. I continue to have the same stance even today.” This, he explains, is because the monuments and effigies of Skopje 2014 are almost exclusively based on Greek and Bulgarian heroes, such as Alexander and Saint Kiril, inventor of the Cyrillic alphabet. There are no statues commemorating any ethnic Albanian heroes. Macedonia’s mostly Muslim Albanian minority seems to have been entirely written out of the country’s past. I hear later that the last straw for many was the erection of a statue depicting Tsar Dusan the Mighty, a Christian orthodox ruler known for subjugating Albanians. Shortly after it was put up an angry mob tried to tear it down. I am coming to understand that this bizarre public display is actually a manifestation of the deep faultlines that exist between Macedonia’s two largest ethnic groups. So why does Grubi’s predominantly Albanian / Muslim party remain in coalition with Gruevski’s conservative VMRO-DPMNE party which mostly represents Macedonia’s majority Orthodox Christian / Slavic community? “Well your viewers have to know the sensitivities of this society to understand the answer to this question,” Grubi explains. “The coalition partners in the Republic of Macedonia are a result of elections. Whoever wins in the Macedonian political block, whoever wins in the Albanian political block; they have the legitimacy of the two largest communities and they bear responsibility to govern together to try and find a common language.” Later I talk to Borian Jovanovski, a TV journalist whose station was closed down by the government as part of a crackdown on independent media. He begs to differ: “Talking about this project Skopje 2014, yes it’s damaging to inter-ethnic relations, it’s not reflecting the multi-cultural society that Macedonia is. But on the other hand you have an Albanian party in the government – and they agree – so in a way they have responsibility for what’s going on too. It’s obvious that it is damaging inter-ethnic relations which are anyway fragile and damaging Macedonian national identity too because it brings us to history that is unknown to us, in which we are a kind of successor to Alexander the Great. This is not true because Alexander the Great is famous because he enlarged the Hellenic culture. We are Slavs who are not Hellenic at all.”

Underlying inter-ethnic tensions

My next appointment is to see Femi Zekiri, an ethnic Albanian, whose family was terrorised during the run up to last April’s parliamentary and presidential elections, which saw Gruevski win an unprecedented forth term as Prime Minister and his personal choice for president, Gorge Ivanov, returned to office in elections which were heavily criticised by the OSCE.

It is early evening and dark when we reach Radisani, a mostly Macedonian suburb on the outskirts of Skopje. We find the house hidden behind a large brick wall, knock on a heavy metal gate and after several locks and bolts are undone, the gate opens and we enter a yard. The door is re-secured and we are finally greeted by Femi, a man in his mid-40s trying hard to hold back his emotions. As he gives us a brief tour of the property, Femi recalls a series of attacks on his home, the latest of which included firebombing. “An organised mob of around 100 people attacked. It was a pure massacre. One cannot live like that. They yelled: ‘Get out of here. Move out of this place. There’s no room here for you Albanians.'” Femi’s mother shows us a blood-stained t-shirt belonging to one of her grandchildren who had been badly injured during the attack. I look at Femi’s other children who are watching all this. They are putting on a brave face but it is clear that they are afraid. “Nobody takes any action to stop this from happening,” Femi goes on. “It happens when the elections are held. It’s not our fault which Albanian party or which Macedonian party wins or loses.” Next morning I arrange to meet Slagjana Taseva, president of the Macedonia branch of Transparency International, which has been monitoring the government’s stance on ethnic tension. In her view Nikola Gruevski’s government has been stoking-up majority Macedonian fears about the country’s ethnic Albanian minority because it allows the Prime Minister to play a vote-winning nationalist card. “It is artificial … they always keep these problems very high on the agenda because this is the way how they rule,” she says. “We see it all the time and we can immediately recognise it. Its playing with fire, it is dangerous.” To explain further she tells me about an infamous lawsuit here – known as “monster case” – which last July saw six ethnic Albanians sentenced to life imprisonment two years after they were arrested for the alleged murder of five ethnic-Macedonian fishermen. “Nobody was convinced that the people on trial really committed the crime,” she says. “I was not convinced and I’m a lawyer, I believe in the laws and in the procedures. Nobody is convinced this case was properly investigated or that there was proper evidence.” The men were convicted after 46 court hearings, all in closed session. The prosecution case relied mostly on the unsubstantiated claims of a protected state witness. When the verdict was announced, thousands of ethnic Albanians took to the streets in Skopje calling for the return of the Albanian National Liberation Army – an insurgent group that fought on one side of a bitter inter-ethnic conflict here in 2001. This in turn had its roots in the civil wars of the 1990s that followed the break-up of former Yugoslavia, of which Macedonia was once part. The protests inevitably led in to increased fears among the country’s non-Albanian community that sinister forces were hell-bent on destabilising the country and that conflict might return. Among Albanians many believe these anxieties are exactly what the government wished to provoke. I ask Taseva whether the government could really manipulate events in this way. She points to a photograph of Prime Minister Gruevski and his cousin Saso Mijalkov, who is head of the UBK. Macedonia’s secret police. “They are using the surveillance system as if it is their own property,” she says.”They are gathering collecting many different types of information that they are afterward using to attack their political opponents or other people who do not really agree with their politics. In all positions in the public administration and in the judiciary, they install not only their close relatives but also people from the political party very close to the leadership. That way they manage to establish complete control.” These were clearly disturbing allegations to hear from an NGO and I had many questions I wanted to put to Prime Minister Gruevski or any other minister or spokesman his government would put up. But as I had feared, my numerous requests for such an interview fell on deaf ears. Unsurprisingly, the country’s main opposition party, the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, was more cooperative. Next day I sat down with Radmila Sekerinska, the party’s vice president, and asked her about the news reports of coup that I’d picked up just before arriving in the country. “The Prime Minister had a press conference accusing the Leader of the Opposition [Zoran Zaev] of espionage and of organising a coup d’etat,” she replied. “And of course these allegations are absurd, but it was clear that the government is planning to frame him simply because he asked that the next elections be organised by a technical government. If this was happening in normal circumstances everyone would laugh, but of course Macedonia has become a different country in the last few years and that’s why we are extremely worried.” So why, I asked her, had her boss wanted the Prime Minister to stand aside and let a technical (or interim) government organise the next elections? Because, she explained, “we are in possession of documents that show that the government has been involved in phone tapping thousands of citizens: political opponents, journalists, activists even diplomats and that the government has been abusing institutions for electoral fraud, for political pressure in the judiciary, but also for political abuse of police forces.” When I asked if I could see some of these documents, she told me I would have to be patient. “We are preparing our moves very carefully not to endanger the process and not to endanger our sources. So basically when we start disclosure we will have a series of press conferences … but probably the prosecutor will try to prevent the media from publishing whatever will be disclosed.” Sure enough, when rumours began to circulate that the opposition had evidence of widespread government wire-tapping, the Ministry of Interior warned journalists not to report such claims on grounds that it would harm national security. But when the press conference began in early February, the Social Democratic Union’s offices of the opposition were packed with journalists and a large contingent of party supporters. The latter cheered wildly as their leader Zoran Zaev – whose passport had been taken from him – came onto the stage. But the atmosphere grew more sombre as Zaev began to reveal details, purportedly leaked by disaffected member of the country’s security apparatus, of a massive government phone-tapping and surveillance programme. The spying, Zaev said, had been conducted under the explicit orders of the Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and his cousin Saso Mijalkov, the sinister head of the country’s secret police. “The things that we saw and that you will see and hear in the days ahead surpasses the darkest expectations,” added Zaev. “All the documents show that Macedonia is divided in two worlds. In the first one are Gruevski and Mijalkov who politically and financially benefit from the wiretapping. In the second world are the rest of us, whose privacy and constitutional rights have been completely trampled.” Zaev then played excerpts of illegally taped conversations, some involving his own conversations with journalists and members of his family, as well as taped conversations between the current finance and interior ministers. He promised more shocking revelations were to come and urged the international community to examine the revelations closely. Over subsequent weeks, as opposition press conference followed press conference, each revealing yet more damning evidence of secret surveillance, the scandal gained widespread currency; not just in Macedonia’s few remaining independent newspapers and the international media, but also in the capital’s bars and cafes where feverish speculation over the possible fate of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s administration was intensifying. After staying silent for days, the embattled government eventually began to fight back with counter allegations, but it was clear that a full blown political crisis was now underway. On my last day in Macedonia, I went back to the square with the hideous statue of Prometheus where an anti-government demonstration was taking shape. Mingled with the crowd, my eyes were drawn time and again to the gilded figure, credited in ancient Greek mythology with bringing fire to humanity. I could not help but wonder what dangerous flames were now spreading through this increasingly divided country and where the crisis would end.