Yesterday (20th of June), a long-time planned massive rally of the United Opposition of FYROM ( a diverse group of political parties, organizations and individual citizen opposed to decade-long rule of far-right leader Nikola Gruevski) was held in Skopje. The protest, specifically planned as a more massive and assertive event and advocated as such on social media, brought a large number of citizens on the street which demanded fundamental social changes as well as agreement for fair and proper early Parliamentary elections.
After initial gathering of protesters in front of the so-called “Special Public Prosecution”, a body that investigates alleged fraud and mass phone surveillance by the ruling VMRO-DPMNE party, citizens walked towards government building where, among other public speaker, former Prime Minister, Ms. Radmila Šeќerinska, spoke about the uncompromising stance of the opposition for fair early election, supervised by European institutions. Soon, later in the early evening, the protesters paint-bombed and broke windows of the Ministry of Justice in central part of city of Skopje. This act of revolt was based on what is perceived as lack of independence of judicial system from the current government.
The bulk of the rioters than moved to protest in front of FYROM’s Parliament, which was again attacked with paint-bombs. One marked escalation of the nature of protests which were until now held on almost daily basis, but were deliberately kept peaceful by the organizers – apart from symbolic paint-bombing – was an attempt to demolish the statue of Greek mythological hero, Prometheus. The monumental statue which is placed opposite the Parliament building as a part of systematic creation of “Ancient Macedonian” identity (which, according to the government, had “nothing to do with Hellenism”) was target of the protester which tried to bring it down, but were meet with intervention by heavily-equipped anti-riot police forces.
In the immediate chaos as police forces tried to establish a perimeter around the statues, protesters briefly physically and quite violently confronted the police, but the situation calmed quickly. Individual members of the opposition approached police officers with appeals that they should “join them” and “cease to defend criminals which exploit them”. After 22.00 local time the protesters disbanded. After repeated attack on the so-called “Macedonian Triumphal Arch” in the last weeks, the attempt to demolish Prometheus’ statue indicates that among a large section of the population there’s a dissatisfaction and revolt against pursuing of policy of ethnic identity change based on forgery of classical Hellenic identity.
(Remark about the video: attack on the FYROM Ministry of Justice is at: 00.52 while attempt at demolition of the statue of Prometheus is at: 02:08)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecQCDOO_cO0
