“The best way is for the focus of the Bulgarian community in the Republic of North Macedonia to return to Skopje and there is no need for them to address their demands to Bulgaria, because they are citizens of North Macedonia,” said the Foreign Minister of the Republic of North Macedonia, Buyar Osmani.
According to him, the focus that is placed on Bulgaria, regarding the changes in the country’s constitution, in order to include the Bulgarians in North Macedonia in its preamble, is wrong.
The beaten secretary of the association “Tsar Boris the Third” in Ohrid, Hristiyan Pendikov, is scared of how he will return to Skopje. He continues to receive threats on social media. This is what Pendikov told Osmani during their meeting yesterday.
We remind you that the Foreign Ministers of Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia, Nikolay Milkov and Buyar Osmani, visited the VMA yesterday.
“He is our citizen. The state must create an atmosphere of zero tolerance for hate speech, because it will not end,” Osmani said in an interview with Macedonian TV 24.
Asked why he went to Sofia, why Pendikov himself was immediately transported there for treatment and whether the conflict in which he was injured had an ethnic or criminal basis, Osmani replied that every citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia has the right to be treated outside the country.
“I spoke with the victim’s mother, who was very offended because the media (in the Republic of North Macedonia) and the public defined her son as a drug addict and drug dealer. However, every citizen of North Macedonia may have a different way of thinking, but that does not mean that we have the right to give public qualifications, to insult, to challenge how someone feels or to approach with violence,” said Osmani.
In his words, his function, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, is to prevent cases “which may be under the jurisdiction of other institutions, from acquiring the character of deteriorated interstate relations with Bulgaria with all the consequences that may have in terms of the country, and in terms of inter-ethnic relations”.
On Friday, the media in North Macedonia reported that in a bulletin of the Ministry of the Interior of North Macedonia dated 17.12.2022, there is information that the police in Ohrid reported “suspicion of drug production and distribution, and during a search of the Ohrid village of Leskoecs cocaine”. In the bulletin, the initials of the suspect are H.P. 22 years old. In the bulletin of the Ministry of the Interior on the beating of Hristiyan Pendikov on 19.01, it was reported that he was 21 years old.
In the announcement of the prosecutor’s office on charges of causing grievous bodily harm during the beating, it was reported that the case began with a blow to the victim’s head and the words of the aggressor, “Aren’t you ashamed to call yourself Bulgarian?!?”.
Regarding the changes in the RSM laws, which concern changing the names of our clubs, Osmani said: “The constitutional changes are the attitude of our citizens to the communities here (in North Macedonia), to the ethnic communities. Do not put Bulgaria in this context. The Bulgarians here are citizens of this country and rightly ask why they are excluded from the constitution, like the Croats, Montenegrins and other communities. Do we have equal treatment or do we have some threshold of the number of communities below which they should not be included in the constitution”.
The Macedonian foreign minister explained that “the actual changes in the basic law are not controversial. I think that a public debate should be opened, everything should be calculated, the party “shells” should be separated regarding the changes in the constitution and the essence should be discussed”.
According to him, it is important to hear that there must be an end to the provocations and the intention of a “small group of people” to hold hostage the relations between Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia.
Asked about the fact that the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the ambassador of our country in Skopje, Angel Angelov, for consultations, Osmani answered that the probable reason was the invitation to the Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nikolay Milkov, to speak in the Bulgarian Parliament on the subject of the case of Christian Pendikov.
“That is why it is important that we be proactive in order not to allow a one-sided presentation of the entire situation to the Bulgarian public, but especially to Europe. The fact that I was in Sofia yesterday and visited our fellow citizen showed that this is not a state policy of discrimination or violence towards any community in North Macedonia. And to hear that there will be zero tolerance and punishment for any provocation, hate speech or violence. We will be in communication. Of course, it is possible to have an asymmetric presentation of the situation, but it is important for us to be proactive in terms of addressing the demands of the Bulgarian community, but also in terms of the need for the rest of the citizens in North Macedonia not to be provoked”, said Ottomans.
![[All Japan Table Tennis 2023 Venue Report]A 7-day hot battle has started! – Japan Table Tennis Association](https://jtta.s3.ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/23163641/FOP-864x576.jpg "[All Japan Table Tennis 2023 Venue Report]A 7-day hot battle has started! – Japan Table Tennis Association")