site.btaNational Awakeners' Day Event at Defunct Bulgarian Cultural Club Sparks Legal Action in North Macedonia

The Deputy President of the Assembly of the Republic of North Macedonia, Vesna Bendevska, has submitted a report to the main prosecution service in Bitola claiming that the Bulgarian cultural club Ivan Mihaylov in Bitola continues to operate despite its removal from the central register, the website sdk.mk said.

Bendevska's action followed an event on November 1, when Bulgaria celebrates the National Awakeners' Day. The event, held in a venue managed by the association, featured a presentation of a facsimile edition of the play Macedonian Blood Wedding by Voydan Chernodrinski. During the presentation, "speakers described Chernodrinski as a Bulgarian revivalist and Macedonian Blood Wedding as part of Bulgarian cultural heritage, symbolizing the struggles and aspirations for freedom of Bulgarians".

"These are provocations and violations of Macedonian national sentiments," Bendevska said. "I will definitely ask whether state institutions can find a way to ban the activities of this association with a fascist name, which has been removed from the Central Register. If there are indications, I will immediately file a new complaint against Ljupcho Georgievski, the former chair of the now-defunct association."

Ljupcho Georgievski, the former chair of the now-defunct association, responded to this on his personal Facebook page. "After Vesna Bendevska's party (the ZNAM Movement) pardoned the biggest criminals in the Republic of North Macedonia, the same party aggressively targeted our club, showing clear intolerance towards the Bulgarian people in Macedonia. This is a classic example of manipulating institutions to cover up the real problems in the country through ethnic confrontation. Instead of addressing the real challenges and crime in the country, there is an attack on our cultural and national history, which is unacceptable," Georgievski said.

As a member of the Commission for Prevention and Protection against Discrimination of North Macedonia, Bendevska filed a complaint with the prosecution service in Bitola in 2022, resulting in a court case against Georgievski in Bitola for inciting racial hatred and xenophobia and spreading hate speech through the Facebook page of the cultural club Ivan Mihaylov. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for October 6.

In 2023, a law was enacted in North Macedonia to retroactively regulate unacceptable names for associations and foundations. As a result, the Ivan Mihaylov Cultural Club, a Bulgarian association in North Macedonia, was removed from the Central Register in March of the previous year. Before this removal, the entrance door of the club's premises was set on fire, and an individual received a suspended sentence for that.