Three stories of Macedonia's brutal reality...
Courtesy of http://crisis.VMacedonia.com
MURDER IN TETOVO
By Ana Petrusheva
Boris Magdenovski was 58. He had two a
wife and two daughters. He was retired living with his family in poverty. He
went to the village of Brezno everyday to take care of his house and
occasionally he helped out his neighbors with construction work in order to
earn some extra money.
July 1st was not supposed to be any
different. Magdenovski came to the house unaware of the fact that there are
new visitors in the village. During the time he was in his house, the members
of the so-called NLA had already ordered all the inhabitants to leave the
village immediately.
Heavily armed and wearing uniforms, the
terrorists gathered the people in the middle of the village and, as they were
ordering them to leave, they saw Boris Magdenovski. He was passing by, not
noticing what was happening. But the terrorists spotted him and started
shouting at him to stop. He didn’t react because he had hearing problems.
Magdenovski didn’t stop and that cost him
his life. The terrorists shot him and left his body lying on the road. It took
two days before his brother was able to enter the village, now under NLA
control, in order to retrieve his corpse.
His brother Gjoko and his nephew Zoran
were escorted by OSCE representatives to get Boris`s body so they can bury him
in Tetovo. They found his body still laying on the village square. For whole
two days they had no idea how they would handle the funeral since they
couldn’t afford even to buy the coffin. Finally, with some financial help of
the inhabitants of Brezno and several companies from Tetovo they managed to
provide enough money for a modest funeral.
On Tuesday, July 3rd Boris Magdenovski`s
family said their final words to their father, husband and uncle. Yesterday we
visited Boris’s brother. This 61-year-old man, who also has hearing problems,
for the last two years, was living in Brezno, together with his wife. In just
couple of days he has lost his brother and his property. Today he and his wife
Milica live together with his son and his family in a small, overcrowded
apartment in Tetovo. They didn’t register as refugees. Magdenovski, as many
other Macedonian refugees, thought there’s no need for something like that.
“Nobody is going to help us anyway, and since we are staying with our son
there’s really no point going to the Red Cross”, says Milica.
Though these people have lost more than
most of us can even imagine they are still very opened to people and they have
showed great hospitality for us. In their own words, they are still learning
how to cope with the great loss they have suffered. They have no idea what
future will bring, if they will be able to get back to their loved home and
continue with their lives. Even if they do, they will never forget the tragedy
that took their beloved Boris away from them.
-------------------------------
Real Life Story
Destroyers of Memories
By Aleksandar T. Mustrik
The years passed in high school are
always remembered with great pleasure because the friendships made during this
period of education last for life. The memories of those days are very
precious to every emotional human being who seeks strength in them in its
moments of hardship or when is in need of someone that understands him
completely. I have been meeting my friends from high school in disco clubs, at
weddings, in the army, and now I'm meeting them in hospitals.
One of the friends from my days at high
school, with whom I was very close and who's asked me to witness his wedding,
was wounded on duty, serving the country for the police force. We have a
saying that the devil sometimes just won't leave you alone, he makes you do
things. It was Sunday morning and I called his parents house to ask them how
he's doing, but I felt the ground beneath my feet move when I heard the
answer. My friend is wounded! A grenade fell just 3 meters from his post.
Fortunately, he's won this gamble of life
and death because he was behind a gravestone and wore a bullet proved vest.
Part of the shrapnel is buried under his left shoulder, where the bullet
proved vest doesn't reach. The doctors concluded that he's also suffered a
concussion as a consequence of the deadly grenade.
My generation celebrated the 10-year
graduation anniversary not knowing what's happened to him. When our headmaster
read our names out loud, I got up instead of him to tell everybody that his
wife and little daughter fear for his life. The silence after that told us
that something close and loved is tearing out from the bottom of our souls.
For a moment we've felt poorer for the presence of the man that rejoiced life
with us, that crowned his outstanding behavior with his employment at the
ministry of internal affairs, and now he was defending the fragile Macedonian
statehood from the ones that justify the killings with the fight for human
rights.
It's perfectly clear to us that
Arachinovo is a base of the mafia, and that these people allegedly seek
equality, which they use to cover up their further crimes. If these criminals
have until now smuggled cigarettes, drugs and weapons under the umbrella of
the leading parties, and didn't pay taxes, but insisted on getting the budget
funds for free education, health and social security, we can only begin to
imagine what would they do if the constitution guarantied them the right to be
untouchable. None of us opposes their right of education in their mother
tongue, but that right can be realized at the universities that have already
regulated this issue, instead of insisting on a creation of a ghettoized
education facility that will issue diplomas with preferences to the student’s
nationality. Is it equality if someone gets a diploma with no trouble just
because he belongs to one of the nationalities, as opposed to someone who
devotes his life to accomplishing the same?
The employments with a quota are next in
line. You can become a judge with the quota! I wonder if we could have faith
in the judicial system that allows someone that has never studied in
Macedonian to be in a position to have the last word in a case of citizens
that don't speak his language?
My friend was aware about all this while
he was on duty for whole three months without anyone knowing where he is. The
rest of us, we've just realized our bitterness towards the people that want to
destroy our childhood memories, the ones that want to deprive our children of
the joy of growing up in a healthy and normal environment, the same that
spread evil with their weapons and suffering with the drugs that deform the
mind and the comprehension of the human values. I think that a normal human
being is not able to attack civilians just because he wants to get rich on
their account, so I believe that they also are drug addicts, but of a
different kind. Drug addicts that have an urge for blood, innocent victims,
degenerated population that will use the services of their suspicious
businesses and ethnically cleansed territories, that don't exist as a category
in the countries that are on the path of unification.
My class will visit our friend to wish
him a quick recovery. He says that the moment doctors allow him; he's going
back at the front line. We're all aware that it's hard to find a rational
explanation for the paradox that the war is a step towards a peaceful future.
We don't like the war, but even less are we prepared to let these bandits that
call themselves "a liberation army" steal the bliss of future from our kids.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A letter written by D. and V. Saiti, Albanians from Skopje, published in “Dnevnik” on April 11, 2001, and also in Utrinski Vesnik >>>We do not need defenders of the Albanian cause<<<
We address this letter primarily to
the Albanians in Macedonia but also to the Macedonians in general. We are a
married Albanian couple and we were both born in Skopje and both of us are
intellectuals - employed in the Education. With this letter we want to express
our revolt against the unseen terrorism (armed, political, verbal - to name
but few), committed by our brothers in blood - the Albanians in Macedonia.
We ask ourselves if those our defenders
of the “Albanian cause” in Macedonia with their sickly irrational deeds and
public statements (resembling the quotes from the Goebels’ special propaganda
war), think at all what an image they create firstly in our Macedonian fellow
countrypersons and then also in the rest of the world. Those, so called
“Albanian defenders”, regardless the names they come up with: UCK, NLA,
whatever - have contributed to the understanding of the term “Albanian” as a
synonym for: “A member of a primitive, rude, violent, uncivilized tribe”
belonging to the distant and dark Middle Ages where all matters were settled
with a knife and force. Even if somebody at all wants to “place” the Albanian
individual in the 21st century, that will result in an image of an Albanian -
dealer in drugs, arms, involved in trafficking, a Mafioso, a criminal, etc. -
all bearing the most negative connotations possible.
Thus we would like to thank you most
deeply and we firmly forbid you to continue representing us in such a way. The
true Albanian is an honest and hardworking human who carries a great deal
about his/her honor and dignity, a human who respects the family and the
elderly and who is proud of her/his well meaning Islam religion that very
nicely stresses the importance of helping the weak, poor and ill.
Instead of having our brothers in
America, Germany and Switzerland collecting money for arms and for bribing the
foreign journalists so that they can lobby for directing the rage of the
international community against Macedonia as a country where the rights of the
Albanians are violated, our brothers should allocate their funds for building
hospitals, roads, factories and especially schools in the villages where
Albanians live together with the other nationalities in Macedonia. And not
only that - they should encourage their children, especially the girls, to get
education and to become emancipated women as they should be in the 21st
century, instead of forbidding them to go to school and forcing them at early
age to get married so that they can give birth to children in whom they will
sow the seeds of hatred towards all non-Albanians and to whom they will give
weapons and force into absurd wars!
The Albanian intellectual force in
Macedonia is not concentrated only in the Macedonian Parliament and in the
political parties of Xhaferi and Ymeri. We are also here, us who are loyal
citizens of the Macedonian State. All of us are enough aware of the rights
that are given to us here. Be not ashamed to admit that we are much better off
than in the neighboring Albania. And for the rights that should be still given
to us, a verbal war should be waged in the Parliament and not in the Shar
Mountain or the hills around Tetovo.
This is exactly how we understand
democracy - to win using arguments and the power of WORD, not arms.
In the same time we appeal to the
President Trajkovski to prove in practice what he said in the media - to be,
as he was up till now, a president who will equally fight for the rights of
all citizens of Macedonia, regardless their nationality, and to destroy the
terrorism as soon and as profound as possible. We want our children to have a
calm sleep and not to grow up fed with hatred, which hatred in case this war
continues, will against our will contaminate all of us and then it will be to
late for a dialog and negotiations.