site.btaAssociation of the Descendants of Refugees and Migrants from the Territory of the Republic of North Macedonia and friends: Address to the Albanian community in the Republic of North Macedonia

ASSOCIATION DESCENDANTS OF THE REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS FROM THE TERRITORY OF THE REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA AND FRIENDS

TO:         THE ALBANIAN COMMUNITY IN NORTH MACEDONIA AND ITS POLITICAL LEADERS

TO:           THE HEADS OF DIPLOMATIC MISSIONS ACCREDITED IN NORTH MACEDONIA AND BULGARIA

COPY:     MEDIA IN NORTH MACEDONIA, BULGARIA, ALBANIA, AND KOSOVO

DEAR REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ALBANIAN COMMUNITY LIVING IN THE REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA,

A reason to appeal to you as your neighbours and friends, whose ancestors in the past led a common struggle against the Ottoman and Serbian enslavers, are some of the current statements of political leaders of the North Macedonian Albanians. The ruling VLEN party stated that the Bulgarian community will not be included in the Constitution, as Bulgaria did not have a regular government and there was no one to talk to. Until recently, the ruling DUI party promoted the idea that ‘the Macedonians must have good relations with the Albanians, otherwise they will be absorbed by the Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks.’

We believe that these statements do not correspond to the pre-election promises of the Albanian parties but are rather directed against the EU membership of the Republic of Macedonia, against the interests of the Albanians in the Balkans, and against the Albanian-Bulgarian friendship, all of which ultimately serves Serbian interests – something which is openly done by the current government and president of the Republic of Macedonia. You have hardly forgotten that at the early 1990’s, Ms Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova openly spoke out against the breakup of Yugoslavia and opposed the desire for independence of the individual Yugoslav republics. And this year, already as President of the Republic of North Macedonia, during her visit to Serbia, she announced that Serbs live on both sides of the Serbian-North Macedonian border! We know why she did not mention the Macedonian Bulgarians. But we wonder why she didn't mention you, the North Macedonian Albanians? Or maybe you put up with this ignoring? We ask ourselves why you do not react to the statements of the current government in Skopje against the construction of Pan-European Corridor No 8? We know about Belgrade’s dream to eliminate all cooperation with Bulgaria, but this corridor also connects Albania, and reaches Italy. Do you think that these countries have no interest in its construction, or do you want to condemn them to non-connectivity and thus endanger the security of our region so that Belgrade can realize its plans for a ‘Serbian World’?! We ask why they do not react against the leakage of classified NATO information from Skopje to Belgrade?!

As regards the mentioned statements of some Albanian political leaders of today, we must clearly say that the insistence on the part of the Bulgarian people be included in the Constitution of the Republic of North Macedonia, analogous to all other parts of peoples, including the Albanian one, is a request of its citizens with a Bulgarian identity, not of Bulgaria. This was requested because such is the state structure of the Republic of North Macedonia. According to the current Constitution, ‘citizens of the Republic of Macedonia’ are ‘the Macedonian people, as well as the citizens living within its borders who are part of the Albanian people, the Turkish people, the Wallachian people, the Serbian people, the Roma people, the Bosnian people’. The exclusion of parts of other peoples is in the basis of their discrimination.

For the first time already in the summer of 1992, the leader of the party of the united Macedonians, Vancho Veskov, stated that ‘the biggest mistake at this moment is that the help of the Macedonians from all over the world is being eliminated, and especially of those from Bulgaria, whose self-awareness is Bulgarian... In the Republic of Macedonia, these people are discriminated because of their Bulgarian self-awareness. Even those who feel Bulgarian are persecuted in Vardar Macedonia. The Republic of Macedonia must recognize these Bulgarians who live in its territory.’ Vancho Veskov was persecuted for this statement. On September 15, 1992, his two-year-old son Alexander Veskov was killed in front of their home with a hunting rifle. Then Vancho Veskov stated that he had expected this incident to happen to him. The police did not find the perpetrator of the murder, and since the repression of Vancho Veskov did not stop, he was forced to leave the Republic of Macedonia and emigrate to New Zealand. Unfortunately, in this case this is not the only violent death!

Where do you see a request from Bulgaria, and what does it matter what the Bulgarian government is? When during certain periods of the past Albania, under Yugoslav pressure, did not protect the interests of the Kosovo Albanians, did the Kosovo problem not exist? Kosovo has fought for independence no matter what the Albanian government was!

As for the DUI’s message, we make an analogy as if the Serbs would say that the Kosovars should have good relations with them because otherwise the Albanians will swallow them up! We need to remind that Yugoslav dictator Tito also tried to create a Kosovar language. Enver Hoxha’s Albania then decided to help the suffering Albanians in Yugoslavia, but the Kosovars, who are Ghegs, did not become Tosks, even though the Albanian literary language is based on the Tosk dialect. It is not clear to us how the Bulgarians will absorb the North Macedonians, since the differences between the tongues in Bulgaria and North Macedonia are much smaller than between the Gheg and Tosk tongues of the Albanian language. Even today, if the Albanians do not go through a unified education system, the Ghegs and Tosks do not understand each other. We have no such problem. Any native speaker of the Western Bulgarian tongues ​​is also well understood in the Eastern-Bulgarian-speaking areas, and vice versa. For this reason, the probability that the Bulgarians will absorb the North Macedonians is much less than that the Tosks will absorb the Ghegs. Therefore, we call on the Albanian leaders to take care of the Albanian problems and let us solve our problems.

We believe that in the current situation, Albanian unity is threatened because Albania and the Republic of North Macedonia are in a common negotiation package for EU membership, but with Skopje’s refusal to reform in order not to sever ties with Serbia, Tirana is also doomed to isolation. In order to meet this challenge, we insist to the European institutions that Albania and RN Macedonia be separated, and Tirana starts negotiations for EU membership on its own, in order to at least partially stabilize the Balkan geopolitical horizontal.

Regarding the care of the DUI towards them, unwanted by the Macedonians themselves, we state that such a statement contradicts with Albanian traditions. We remind herewith that in all printed Albanian publications, including Albanian newspapers published in Skopje until 1912, the Albanians refer to us – their neighbours – only as Bulgarians. (Bullgarët dhe serbët në artikujt e gazetës “Shkupi” (1911-1912). Shkup/Скопjе/Skopje, 2023. 265) We need to recall that when in 1942 Albania conducted a population census in today’s western RN Macedonia, 72,745 Bulgarians were registered, and they are, for example, the majority in the subprefecture of Tsarev Izvor (Resen district), Korcha prefecture. (Tokat e liruara 1941-1944. Përmbledhje dokumentesh. III. Shkup, 2016. 115-117) Of these Bulgarians there are still living people, but today not one of them is given the right to declare himself as such. Are they second-class citizens?

The described relations of friendship between Macedonian Bulgarians and Macedonian Albanians continued during the period of our common struggles against the regime in communist Yugoslavia. We remind you that in the 1960’s, discussions about Bulgarian-Albanian relations began among the Macedonian Albanian community. This process increasingly alarmed the Yugoslav authorities and mass surveillance of Albanian intellectuals started. In 1969, in the Pirin Café in Skopje, the UDBA intercepted a conversation between Sejdi Kreisi and Hamid Bitik, in which they claimed that Central and Eastern Macedonia were inhabited by Bulgarians, and that there was no Macedonian nation. Then Feta Elmazi from Kicevo was arrested as well, as he claimed that there was no Macedonian nation, and that this population was Bulgarian. (Appendix 1)

The fate of writer and journalist Mehmet Ali Hoxha, editor of the Children's Joy [Detska Radost] magazine is particularly difficult. He was sentenced to 5 years of rigorous imprisonment for denying the existence of a ‘Macedonian’ nation, which was why he contested the right of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts to bear that name. In the trial, it became clear that Mehmet Hoxha repeatedly held similar conversations in the Macedonian Book Publishing House and in the Writers’ Club, in which he ‘denied the Macedonian national, cultural and historical wealth and went so far as to justify the Great Bulgarian aspirations with which Macedonians are not recognized as a nation.’ (Appendix 2)

We express our gratitude to Ramadan Riza Sadiku from Bitola, who on April 15, 1969, sent a letter of protest to the Chancellor of the University of Chicago because of the visit of the creator of the Skopje written standard, Blaze Koneski, to the University of Chicago. In this letter, R. Sadiku wrote: ‘I was very surprised that the communist authorities in Yugoslavia started denationalizing the Bulgarian population in Macedonia... Being a witness as an Albanian teacher in various villages, and for a short time in the town of Bitola, of what the authorities are doing against the Macedonian Bulgarians, and bearing in mind the manifestations of the mentioned Blaze Koneski, around whom a public question has now arisen, following the dictate of my consciousness I considered it right to inform you... Before the establishment of communist power in Yugoslavia, we had never heard of any Macedonian nation and Macedonian language... For centuries already, we, the Macedonian Albanians, have known these Slavs only as Bulgarians, and we have called their language Bulgarian, as they themselves called it.’ (Appendix 3)

Apparently, this protest was paid attention by the Chancellor of the University of Chicago because he sent a response in which he tried to justify his action. R. Sadiku, however, rejected the said arguments as untenable and sent a second letter on August 27, 1969. In it, he contrasted his own impressions with the pseudo-scientific claims: ‘I, as a teacher in Macedonia under Yugoslav rule and a resident of this region until recently, know that the local Slavic population is Bulgarian, and its language is Bulgarian.’ To confirm the rightness of his statement, he quoted a material of Skopje Nova Makedonija newspaper from March 8, 1969, in which the findings of a state commission that examined how the public treats the official language were published. ‘It turns out that even the teachers who teach it to the youth, talk in it at school in the home dialect. And officials also use in their official correspondence a ridiculous jumble of local dialects, of Croatian or Serbian expressions, mixed with words and newly coined expressions from this ‘literary’ language.’ For this reason, R. Sadiku is convinced that ‘the creation of Blaze Koneski and some persons like him is something funny, not to mention it is humiliating for the domestic society.’ (Appendix 4)

However, the most critical political assessment by Albanians of Serbian Macedonian nationalism was made in 1971, when the September issue of the leading Albanian newspaper Flamuri published abroad, pointed out that a ‘new’ Macedonian nation and church were invented in Yugoslav Macedonia.

This latest collaboration between Macedonian Bulgarians and Macedonian Albanians has borne fruit. As early as 1947, Macedonian Bulgarians in the free world supported Albanian protests Yugoslavia’s attempts to absorb Albania. Several dozens of articles were published in The Macedonian Tribune newspaper in support of the struggle of the Albanians against Yugoslav politics. In 1958, Gian Marconi, MD, a Skopje-born Albanian who lived as an emigrant in Buffalo, sent greetings to the Congress of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization wishing ‘freedom to all oppressed nationalities in a free and democratic Macedonia.’ In 1962, G. Marconi attended the 41st Congress of the Macedonian Bulgarians held in Buffalo and delivered a speech. In it, he drew attention to the contribution of some Albanian Catholics to the cause of the Macedonian Bulgarians, such as Sister Aloati, or of some Albanian teachers in the Bulgarian Catholic schools in Thessalonica and Istanbul. (Appendix 5) The following year, a Loyalty Day parade was held in Buffalo. The local organization of the Macedonian Bulgarians decided to participate together with the representatives of the Albanian community. The Bulgarian-Albanian group was the most applauded by the attendees, which is why it was ranked first in the event competition. (Appendix 6)

Against the background of the above-presented data, the current positions of some Albanian political leaders in Skopje cause real bewilderment. We want to emphasize that we are not disputing either the Macedonian or the Kosovar identity. We believe that every person has the right to decide for himself what he is and what language he speaks. We want to protect the human right of those citizens of North Macedonia who have preserved their historical Bulgarian self-awareness identity, to have the right to freely express it. The deprivation of this human right is not a bilateral dispute with Bulgaria but is the essence of the long-standing internal conflict in the Republic of North Macedonia. Our organization, representing the interests of descendants of immigrants and refugees from the Republic of Macedonia, will never back down from defending this human right, which is enshrined in the EU-accepted negotiating framework for the Republic of North Macedonia.

Dear representatives of the Albanian community in the Republic of North Macedonia, the choice of the path that Skopje will take towards its EU integration also depends on you! You have the right to take your part in the decision whether the Republic of North Macedonia will continue to follow the current path to Belgrade, or the path to Europe will be chosen.

With respect and fraternal greetings,

CO-CHAIRPERSONS: Prof Trendafil Mitev, Assoc Prof Spas Tashev, Ilija Stojanovski

SECRETARY: Dimitar M. Dimitrov

Sofia, August 30, 2024