 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(October 2022) |
| Unrest in Gostivar and Tetovo (1997) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Date | 9 July 1997 | ||
| Location | |||
| Methods | Protests, Civil unrest | ||
| Parties | |||
| Lead figures | |||
| Casualties and losses | |||
| |||
Unrest in Gostivar and Tetovo [1] took place on July 9, 1997, in Macedonia. [2] [3]
A new law on the territorial organization of the municipalities of Macedonia was passed in 1996. The Democratic Party of Albanians won candidates in several municipalities in the western of the country. The mayor of Gostivar, Rufi Osmani, and mayor of Tetovo, Alajdin Demiri, displayed the flag of Albania on municipality buildings, despite the display of flags of foreign countries on municipal government buildings being outlawed by the Constitution of Macedonia at the time.
This led to controversy, and a debate in the Macedonian public over whether the government should intervene and take down the flags. Since June there had been a debate in the parliament.
Some Macedonian parties announced that they would take down the flags, which further caused a heated atmosphere in the Albanian community. Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski decided to approve a police operation to remove the flags.
Police raids in Gostivar started at late night, 8 July, when firstly the electricity was turned off, and then the police raided several night bars. The next day, at approximately noon, several thousand people held protests on the Gostivar Square, waving Albanian flags. Mayor Rufi Osmani spoke before the crowd, which chanted various slogans, including "Albania, Albania." The reason for this protest, it was said, was the decision of the Constitutional Court against the use of foreign state flags on government buildings in Macedonia.
At 15:00, special police units arrived at the municipal building in Gostivar and began removing the flags. Suddenly, there was automatic gunfire throughout the town, forcing the police to respond; four Albanians were killed and mass arrests and chases ensued, leading to chaos. Following the arrests and raids on several houses at the end of the day, the flag of Albania had been taken down, while the flag of Macedonia had been destroyed by the crowd. The mayors of Gostivar and Tetovo were arrested, and the following days a curfew was in effect in the cities.
On 10 July violent demonstrations continued, with gunfire from both ethnic parts in Gostivar, which resulted in the wounding of 70 people, including three policemen. In July, the two main Albanian parties, Party for Democratic Prosperity and National Democratic Party, held a joint assembly in Tetovo, to reinforce the Albanian request. The assembly decided that the Albanians establish their own paramilitary police in black uniforms reminiscent of the Albanian Fascist Militia in World War II.
As a result of the unrest four Albanian civilians were killed, seventeen wounded and Three hundred and twelve were arrested meanwhile three police officers were wounded.
Both mayors, Rufi Osmani and Alajdin Demiri, were sentenced to 13 years in prison for violating the Constitution. They were later pardoned under the coalition government of VMRO-DPMNE and DPA. Osmani filed a lawsuit against the state at the European Court of Human Rights, which was rejected.
Macedonians interpreted this as a function of state law while Albanians have used it as an argument that the government violates their human rights, and that they are oppressed and discriminated against.
The National Liberation Army, also known as the Macedonian UÇK was an ethnic Albanian militant and separatist militia that operated in the Republic of Macedonia in 2001 and was closely associated with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Following the 2001 insurgency in Macedonia, it was disarmed through the Ohrid Framework Agreement, which gave greater rights and autonomy to the state's Macedonian Albanians.
Tetovo is a city in the northwestern part of North Macedonia, built on the foothills of Šar Mountain and divided by the Pena River. The municipality of Tetovo covers an area of 1,080 km2 (417 sq mi) at 468 meters (1,535 ft) above sea level, with a population of 63,176. The city of Tetovo is the seat of Tetovo Municipality.
The Albanians in North Macedonia are the second largest ethnic group in North Macedonia, forming 446,245 individuals or 24.3% of the resident population. Of the 2,097,319 total population in the 2021 census, 619,187 or 29.52% are Albanians.
Gostivar is a city in North Macedonia, located in the upper Polog valley region. It is the seat of one of the larger municipalities in the country with a population of 59,770, and the town also covers 1.341 square kilometres. Gostivar has road and railway connections with the other cities in the region, such as Tetovo, Skopje, Kičevo, Ohrid, and Debar. A freeway was built in 1995, from Gostivar to Tetovo, 24 km (15 mi) long. Gostivar is the seat of Gostivar Municipality.
Alajdin Demiri was an Albanian politician, famous for his role as mayor in the 1997 uprising in Tetovo and Gostivar, by ethnic Albanians for which he was later sentenced to two years in prison.
The 2001 insurgency in Macedonia was an armed conflict which began when the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) insurgent group, formed from veterans of the Kosovo War and Insurgency in the Preševo Valley, attacked Macedonian security forces at the end of January 2001, and ended with the Ohrid Agreement, signed on 13 August of that same year. There were also claims that the NLA ultimately wished to see Albanian-majority areas secede from the country, though high-ranking members of the group have denied this. The conflict lasted throughout most of the year, although overall casualties remained limited to several dozen individuals on either side, according to sources from both sides of the conflict. With it, the Yugoslav Wars had reached Macedonia. The Socialist Republic of Macedonia had achieved peaceful independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.
Turks in North Macedonia, also known as Turkish Macedonians and Macedonian Turks, are the ethnic Turks who constitute the third largest ethnic group in the Republic of North Macedonia. According to the 2002 census, there were 77,959 Turks living in the country, forming a minority of some 3.8% of the population. The community forms a majority in Centar Župa and Plasnica.
The Battle of Tetovo, was the largest engagement during the 2001 insurgency in the Republic of Macedonia, in which Macedonian security forces battled the National Liberation Army (NLA) for control of the city.
Mehmet Gega was a teacher and an Albanian rights activist. He was born and raised from a noble family, one of the few traditional tetovarian families with old roots. Since he was a young boy, he had a revolutionary spirit and directly recognized the injustices and systematic terror exerted by the Yugoslav gendarmerie in these lands. As a young man, he was noted for his ingenuity, courage, and willingness to resist the violence exercised by the monarchic powers of that time. He was therefore arrested for the first time in 1939.
Early parliamentary elections were held in the Republic of Macedonia on 5 June 2011, a year earlier than necessary. All 123 parliamentary seats of the Sobranie were due for election, including the 3 seats provided for the first time for representatives of the Macedonian citizens living abroad: 1 from Europe, 1 from North America, and 1 from Asia and Australia. The decision of the ruling parties, the Christian Democratic VMRO-DPMNE and the ethnic Albanian Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), to dissolve the Parliament and call for an early election was preceded by protests of the Social Democratic Union (SDSM), the major opposition party, and subsequent boycott of the Parliament by them, and by other smaller opposition parties.
The 2012 Republic of Macedonia inter-ethnic violence started in early 2012 and involved ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians of the Republic of Macedonia.
The Smilkovci Lake killings also called the Smilkovci Lake massacre was the killing of five ethnic Macedonian civilians that took place on 12 April 2012. They were shot and killed at a man-made lake near the village of Smilkovci, outside the Macedonian capital Skopje.
Operation Mountain Storm was carried out on 7 November 2007 by special police forces of the Republic of Macedonia against an armed ethnic Albanian group in the Šar Mountains of Brodec above Tetovo region with ties to Albanian paramilitary of the conflicts in Kosovo (1998–1999), Preševo Valley (2000–2001) and Macedonia (2001).
The 2015 Kumanovo clashes, also known as Operation Divo naselje, were a series shootouts which erupted during a raid between the Macedonian police and an armed group identifying itself as the National Liberation Army (NLA). They began on 9 May 2015 in the northern Macedonian town of Kumanovo. During the shootings, eight Macedonian policemen and 14 of the militants were killed, while 37 officers were wounded and hospitalized. The shooting ended on 10 May 2015, in an operation by the Macedonian police and armed forces, in which 30 militants were arrested and charged with terrorism-related charges by the Macedonian authorities.
The Karpalak ambush, referred to by Macedonians as the Karpalak massacre, was an attack carried out by the National Liberation Army (NLA) against a convoy of the Army of the Republic of Macedonia (ARM) near the village of Grupčin on 8 August 2001 during the 2001 insurgency in Macedonia. Ten members of the ARM's Military Reserve Force, including two officers, were killed at Karpalak and three others were wounded. The ambush was the single deadliest incident of the conflict up until that point. It was speculated that the ambush was carried out in retaliation for a Macedonian police raid in Skopje, the day before in which five NLA insurgents were killed.
The 1996–1997 Macedonian protests was mass rioting and popular demonstrations led by students and Albanians in Macedonia against discrimination of Albanians, the ban of the Albanian flag and economic hardships.
On the evening of 8 September 2021, a fire broke out in the modular hospital for COVID-19 patients in Tetovo. The fire killed 14 people, 12 of whom were patients and two were relatives of the patients. The security camera footage of the fire has showed that the fire spread rapidly and engulfed the hospital.
Combatants
