Tag Archives: Macedonia

August 16, 2019

Interview: The fight against the Ilovica-Stuka mine project in Macedonia

by lefteast  

Note from LeftEast editors: In the spring of 2017 small towns across Macedonia turned into hubs of grassroots struggles against international mining projects in the country.[1] These citizen initiatives shared the same fear: that concessions for exploitation granted as part of a wider policy for attracting FDIs will bring devastating environmental and social consequences with very marginal benefits for the local areas and the country as a whole. A particular focal point of the struggle has been the Ilovica-Shtuka mining project for the exploitation of copper and gold, by the Canadian-British company EuroMaxx Reso ..

March 5, 2019

Macedonia’s position on Venezuela: A Perspective from the Left

by Recep Haktan Ismail  

1. Has the government in your country taken an official position regarding the situation in Venezuela? If yes, what is the position? If we consider the twitter posts of the Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov as official statements of the ministry and the Government itself, then we could say that our government has an official position on the situation in Venezuela. The position is not the least bit surprising if we take into account that our country’s government is subordinated to Western imperialism and has completely lost its sovereignty in the last year. Namely, the Tweet read as follows: “In line with our E ..

January 15, 2019

“Why I don’t recognize North Macedonia as my home country”

by Goran Lazarevski  

Note from LeftEast editors: Last week, Macedonia’s Parliament approved a constitutional amendment to change the country’s name to the Republic of North Macedonia. Under the agreement, the country’s language will be called Macedonian and its people known as Macedonians/citizens of the Republic of North Macedonia. The new name will be used both internationally and bilaterally, so that even the 140 or more countries that recognise the name Macedonia will also have to adopt North Macedonia. In Macedonian, the name is Severna Makedonija. While mainstream media have described this vote as “histori ..

March 7, 2018

Macedonia’s Grassroots Resistance to Mining: A Struggle for the South-Eastern Region’s Survival

by Simona Getova  

Editors’ note: this text has been published in cooperation with Bilten.org, where it first appeared on 28.02.2018. “For fifteen years now my family and I have been investing in organic agriculture, working the land together with my children to build a better life for them in our homeland,” says Dimche Baleski, an organic producer from the municipality of Valandovo, during a public debate on proposed amendments to the Law on Minerals held at the Macedonian Parliament on 1 February 2018. He continues: “And now, without any consultation with us, the affected community, you set up a ticking bomb in our yards ..

February 28, 2018

On the Macedonian question: Statement from DEA and the Red Network

by lefteast  

Concerning the recent developments in the Balkans, DEA and the Red Network state the following: The background to understand recent events is the initiative of USA-NATO and the EU to impose a new “stability” and control to the region, by establishing an immediate connection of all the countries with the major imperialist organizations. The timeframe that has already been announced (the EU Summit in Sofia at the end of May and the NATO Summit at the end of June) highlights that they are moving in a fast pace to address the difficulties that Western imperialism is facing in the Middle East, and the turn of Turk ..

February 12, 2018

The Left in Greece & Macedonia: We can write new pages of common struggle!

by lefteast  

The ongoing negotiations between the Greek and the Macedonian government on the issue of the “name” of the Republic of Macedonia have sparked a nationalist backlash in Greece- it manifested itself in two mass nationalist rallies, the first in Thessaloniki on January 21st (which ended with the burning down of the Libertaria Squat) and the second in Athens on February 4th. We approached comrades from both Greece and Macedonia, and asked them about the response of the radical left to this situation, but also the possibilities that it might open for future common struggles against neoliberal capitalism. 

February 12, 2018

Alek Atevik: We need a Balkan socialist movement

by lefteast  

Alek Atevik is working in Skopje. He is an editor of Nova iskra and a member of Marxist Organization Crveni. He is a founding member of Levica, where he is a coordinator of Program Sector Foreign policy, Defense and Security. LE1: It is interesting to think if, to what extent and how the left in each country has influenced the left in the other. The Greek left has had a formative impact on the Macedonian left- how, if at all, has the fall from grace of Syriza impacted on the Macedonian left? Is that so, and if yes, how is this influence reflected in your conversations, strategies and ways of organising? Alek At ..

March 3, 2017

Nationalism at the rescue of Macedonia’s Criminal Elites

by Adela Gjorgjioska  

The political temperature has been exponentially rising in Macedonia for some time now. It reached boiling point on March 1st when President Ivanov refused to grant SDSM (Social Democratic Union of Macedonia) the mandate to form a government. Neither the governing right-wing populist VMRO-DPMNE, nor the opposition party SDSM managed to obtain the majority necessary to form Government at December’s elections. It was only recently after SDSM got the support from the MPs from three ethnic Albanian parties that it was able to request the mandate. The refusal to grant it surpasses the President’s power in Macedon ..

January 23, 2017

Layoffs of pregnant workers in Macedonia

by Adela Gjorgjioska  

The following article was originally published by the Serbo-Croatian online platform, Bilten. It is republished here with that site’s kind permission. Almost as shocking as the news of the targeted expulsion of 10 pregnant women mid-2016 from a textiles factory in Kriva Palanka, a town in north-eastern Macedonia, was its coverage in Macedonian media: “Pregnancy has expelled 10 female workers from their jobs”, stated one, bringing the attention to the body/reproductive condition of the female worker, and misplacing in the process the focus and responsibility away from the employer. In this case it was a text ..

December 10, 2016

“A Spark in the Dark”- new left party Levica determined to enter Macedonia’s Parliament?!

by Adela Gjorgjioska  

For a decade now, Macedonia has been systematically devastated by the deeply criminal rightwing populist Gruevski regime, which has demolished the rule of law, media, democracy in the country and has put the commons in the Party’s private possession resulting in rising poverty and unemployment, and a huge exodus of young people in particular. Following two waves of mass protests and an EU-mediated political agreement, the elections present an opportunity to finally get rid of Gruevski’s government. They also represent an opportunity for the relatively new political player, the recently formed lef ..