Dear fellow Macedonians, friends and supporters of the R. Macedonia and the Macedonian people,

 

We the Macedonian community of Windsor and Essex county have gathered here today to express publicly our national pain and anger from the recent  aggression of the Albanian terrorists over the northern border of the western part of the Republic of Macedonia, and the city of Tetovo.

Today, we the Macedonians of Windsor and the surrounding area have gathered peacefully to protest against the passive behaviour of our Canadian Government over this issue, and to ask the media to stop spreading misleading information about  the war in Macedonia  to the Canadian public.

 

We the Canadians of Macedonian decent can not stand to hear and to see  the continuing misrepresentation of the events in Macedonia by the numerous Canadian newspapers and TV stations.  We think that their unbalanced journalism,  supports the Albanian terrorists to make great harm to Macedonian democracy  and to put the future of one whole nation at risk.

The media is constantly and intentionally failing to give a complete  fair picture of the events in Macedonia, especially on the issue of the  extent of human rights already given to the Albanian population in Macedonia. They constantly inform Canadian public that: “Albanian rebels fight for greater ethnic rights in Macedonia”. 

First of all, the term Albanian rebels is not the appropriate and right expression to paint the truth about these people. 

Who exactly are these “Albanian rebels”?

According to XAVIER RAUFER, a French expert from the Criminology Institute in Paris and author of the book “The Albanian Mafia”, they are terrorists who call themselves the National Liberation Army or UCK the Macedonian version of the KLA of Kosovo. They are a  semy–military wing of the Albanian Mafia which traffics drugs, immigrants and prostitutes in Western Europe. Raufer says that the current offensive of the Albanian rebels in Macedonia is mainly motivated by desire to gain control over the path of drugs in so called “the Balkan golden triangle” (Macedonia-Kosovo-Serbia) in order to illegally smuggle more drugs, immigrants and prostitutes in Western Europe.  In order to achive this goal they try to attract more young Albanian volunteers into their military groups, by proclaiming that the war is for establishing the Albanian dream of “Greater Albania”. Their plan A is to federalize  Western Macedonia as an Albanian province called “ILIRIDA” , plan B is to succseed form Macedonia, then Kosovo, Ilirida, along with Albania will unify to become   “ Greater Albania”.

The media  has not bothered a single time to mention the already enormous amount of human/minority rights given to the Albanians in Macedonia.

During the last 10 years of Macedonian independence, it become an inevitable practice that every government will had a coalition with  the Albanian minority political parties.  In the current coalition  government of 15 ministries,  the political parties of the Macedonian Albanians holds five key ministering  seats and five deputy ministry seets. There are 25 Albanian MPs in the 120 seats of the Macedonian Parliament. 

Many of the Macedonian ambassadors throughout the world especially in Europe are from the Albanian minority political parties.

Also, minority rights are extended to the maximum where education is concerned. The Albanian minority in the country is educated in its mother tongue up to and through the University level (a brand new all Albanian speaking University is under-construction at the moment). 

Many TV and radio stations in Macedonia also broadcast their programs in the Albanian language. Macedonia had Albanian language TV programs even before Albania had a TV station. 

There are numerous Albanian daily newspapers, magazines, and literature printed in Macedonia. 

Albanians in Macedonia hold high-ranking executive positions in public enterprises, the army, the police, and in local governments.

The Macedonian Army and Police have Albanian generals and other high-ranking officers.

In the municipalities where Albanians are more than 20% of the population, the Albanian language is an official language of communication.

In 1999, 30% of Albanians were and still are represented in the Prosecution Office and the courts in Macedonia. In the places of western Macedonia where Albanians are the majority almost all prosecutors and judges are Albanians.

On the local elections 26 ethnic Albanians were elected mayors of municipalities out of 123 municipalities in Macedonia.

This is just a small fragment of the enormous amount of rights given to the  Albanians in Macedonia. Rights given to Albanians in Macedonia have been uplifted to a level much higher than what the European conventions and juridicial practices in Euro  countries have prescribed.

Furthermore, we the Macedonian Canadians would like to point out how the imprecise wording of Canadian 'reputable' news organizations, tends to blur the truth and whip up sympathy for the Albanian terrorists.  At the end of almost every report in the past few weeks about Macedonia, the news has concluded by saying "the Albanians make up 25 percent of the population in Macedonia."  This has the unstated effect of legitimizing Albanian separatism, by appealing to the sympathies of the so called "progressive" Westerners, who are eager to embrace every endangered minority. 

We urge the media to recall their memories of the refugee crisis in Kosovo when Macedonia and the Macedonians welcomed into their country over 400.000 Albanian refugees from Kosovo during the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia!?? Macedonia's stability in  1999 was sacrificed in the name of humanity by it’s readiness to accept 400.000 Albanian Kosovar refugees into the country while none of the NATO Countries was willing to take no more than a few hundreds of refugees.

Is this the way how the  media is  saying THANK YOU for the political, strategic and logistic help which Macedonia gave to NATO during the Kosovo crisis !?

Furthermore, the medias portrayal of ethnic Macedonians as "Slavs", or “Orthodox Slavs” and not Macedonians, is insulting. It seems unnecessary to point out that the terms Slav/Slavic or Slavonic merely describe a broad racial and linguistic sub-category of the Indo-European peoples and languages. They have very little to do with modern nations of ethnicity and national identity. When the terms mentioned above are used to describe ethnic Macedonians, who also live as minorities in Greece, Bulgaria, Albania and Serbia, Macedonians justifiably feel insulted and humiliated by the news reporters. Macedonian sensibilities in this regard have been heightened by the constant denial of our ethno-specificity by Greece and Bulgaria in pursuit of those countries’ political objectives.

While the Slavic tribes which arrived in the Balkan peninsula in the 5-th and 6-th centuries played a role in the development of Macedonian ethnicity and identity, the Macedonian ethnic group has been formed on the basis of the ethnic and cultural input throughout the centuries of many peoples, including the romanized elements of the Ancient Macedonian People. The cultural interaction of all these peoples in Macedonia has created a distinct Macedonian identity and culture. If we were to apply the reasoning adopted by your reporters, other pre-dominantly Slavic peoples such as the Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, Russians, Ukrainians, Slovenians, White Russians, Czechs and Slovaks would all have to be described with Slav (or Orthodox where applicable) prefix or suffix, thus Saxon “English” The Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Cornish would primarily be Celts.

This peaceful protest appeals to the  journalists’ sense of responsibility, fairness logic and reasoning to prevail in their future coverage on the events in Macedonia. Macedonia and its 10 years of successful democratic practice are endangered by the radical, unreasonable, barbaric acts of Albanian guerrillas. Macedonia is the last country in Europe that deserves this  type of irresponsible treatment by the media.

Tell the truth  about Macedonia !   Give Macedonia fair treatment !

At this protest as Canadians of Macedonian decent  we ask our Canadian Government to take more decisive step in supporting the Republic of Macedonia,  it’s souverenity and territorial integrity. We expect Canada publicly to condemn the Albanian terrorists and separatists and to become more active from now on in the worlds political scene for solving this crisis.

May God Who simpatizes with those who are oppressed and who are invaded by terrorisam, be with Macedonia and its people. 

May God our Lord Jesus Christ put His protective arm over Macedonia, over those areas where the barbaric Albanian terrorists by the voice of guns and bombs want  to destroy the peaceful life of all citizens of Macedonia. 

May God help the Macedonian officials to successfully protect the Macedonian people, Macedonian territory, Macedonian mountains, villages, those areas which are under the Albanian terrorist attacks and to sustain all future provocation of Albanian nationalists.

May God help Macedonia to become once again a state of welfare and example  to the world as to how the people of different nationalitis and religions can live together.

May it be so ! In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

Now and ever and unto ages of ages, Amen.

God bless Macedonia !!!

God bless this wonderful democratic country of Canada !!!

For the “Committee for acknowledging the truth about Macedonia”

___________________________________                  

V. Rev. Dr. Aleksandar Mustenikov  

Parish priest of “St. Nicholas” Macedonian Orthodox Church in Windsor, Ontario, Canada

__________________  

Stefo Kruntovski

President of “St. Nicholas” Macedonian Orthodox Church in Windsor, Ontario, Canada