I protest: colors against a criminal regime
Protests in Macedonia, hello! I am glad to be able to greet you with a paraphrase of the cult quote from the “Top Lista Nadrealista”
The protests began on April 12th. That day, around 3-4 PM, a certain George Ivanov, a person calling himself the President of Macedonia, announced that, in order to put an end to the political crisis which had been plaguing Macedonia for a year and a half, he had pardoned politicians under criminal investigation. Among the 56 pardoned persons were the, according to many, two most powerful individuals in the country – the cousins Nikola Grueski and Sasho Mijalkov, who had served as the prime minister and head of the secret police for ten years. Several other ministers’ names were on the list, charged with wiretapping, electoral fraud, harassment.
I was surprised to hear this decision. Is it possible for the “plant” (George Ivanov’s nickname, due to his passivity) to do something like this? It had been clear for a while that he lacked any credibility. This however was a step too far…
But then, once one got over the initial shock and was able to think rationally, this decision seemed rather expected. It was not for nothing that, a while ago, the anonymous lawyer Risto Kitevski started an initiative before the Constitutional Court to enable something like this to occur. No wonder that the Constitutional Court processed his initiative faster than anything else in its history.
Although the ruling VMRO-DPMNE party came out that very day with a statement that they were shocked by Ivanov’s decision, it was clear to everyone that he was merely their puppet. Their dramatic statements were complemented by those of the US State Department, announcing they were deeply concerned by this decision.
Unlike the VMRO and the State Department, I was and still am grateful to George Ivanov for doing this, since his decision only brought us together in the struggle against the undemocratic and criminal regime. If prior to this decision one could occasionally witness arguments among the anti-regime fighters, this decision reminded us who our real opponent was.
The social networks were boiling with resentment. Many activists called for protests. This was embraced by the movement “Protestiram”, which emerged out of last year’s protests, which called out for protests at 6 PM the same day. Several thousands of us came out, a fantastic number, given the short notice.
The protests were heated with revolt, which greatly compensated for the lack of plan. We started marching through the city in the direction of the President’s office. We were chanting and throwing eggs at the office. Afterwards we headed toward the VMRO headquarters, since it was clear that they were behind the decision. There we were cordoned off by special police forces. We were trying to push through for a while, but then we left.
A similar thing happened the following day, the only difference being that the number of protesters and their anger had increased, which led to the office of the President being demolished that day. This partly occurred also due to the fact that the building was not under police protection. The police showed up only after the demolishing had finished. And they started arresting. They arrested 13 individuals, me included.
Violent arrests
The arrested were mainly young people, peaceful activists, who were either not running away from the police because they had no reason to, or had stayed behind to help the elderly. At least two people were injured during the arrests. We were held in the police station the entire day, after which we were freed of charges. All of this caused a great uproar so that, in the following days, we came out in even greater numbers.
In the following days, knowing that the police could break the protests violently, we were thinking how to maintain the non-violent nature of the protests. Somebody suggested that, instead of throwing eggs and rocks, we should be throwing paint balloons. And so it was. We started throwing balloons on the buildings of the Skopje 2014 project the regime had spent 640 million Euros on. 640 million Euros, which could have been used to build hospitals or schools. 640 million Euros, the greater part of which ended up on the ruling party’ offshore accounts.
In the following days we also started throwing paint on buildings that were not part of Skopje 2014. We wanted to send out a message that we are not attacking the buildings, but rather the institutions they represented. The pro-government mouthpieces immediately started accusing us of being vandals and hooligans destroying public property. Our response was that vandals were the ones who had constructed these buildings in a time when poverty was at a record level in Europe, in a situation when children were dying due to the lack of money available for medical treatments. Our response was that hooligans were those who had destroyed our institutions, those who had reduced them to party headquarters.
Because of the various colors we were throwing, people started referring to the movement as the “colorful revolution”.
Although I am part of the movement, I personally find the term debatable. First of all, the adjective “colorful“ connects our resistance to the colored revolutions which occurred in Eastern Europe and the Middle East in the past years, many of which had problematic geo-political geneses and created chaos these countries have not been able to recover from. Second, revolution is a special word for a left-winger like myself and needs to be used carefully.
Young and old, Macedonians, Albanians…
However, the term “colorful revolution” does contain a strong essence. “Colorful” beautifully reflects the spontaneity of the entire movement – the throwing of paint balloons occurred spontaneously, just as the term “colorful revolution”. The colorfulness also beautifully reflects what has been going on during the protests. Among us one can find the young and old, children and people in wheelchairs, persons from all ethnic, sexual and other groups. Among us, one can find members of different movements, organizations and parties, but we are there as citizens. Various colors, joined together to achieve a single goal – to topple an authoritarian and undemocratic regime. The colorfulness is a response to the grayness this regime has been forcing upon us for years. They are building gray buildings and we are throwing paint on them. While they are fighting for grayness, monochromatism, conformity, we are fighting for colorfulness, a multitude of hues, different opinions.
The word “revolution”, on the other hand, can be interpreted not as a violent change of power or social order, but rather as a revolution of the consciousness. We are not fighting to topple Gruevski or VMRO’s rule through violent means. We are fighting to cast off authoritarianism as a means of ruling. In order to achieve this, replacing Gruevski or VMRO only will not suffice. In order to achieve this, a change in the way of thinking among other parties and citizens in general will be needed.
We have been protesting already a month. Fatigue has set in, which should not be denied. For a while I have been waking up tired, with pain throughout my body. But every time I wake up like that I ask myself is the pain I feel now comparable to the pain I have been feeling all these years, as a consequence of the ruling regime? Is the pain I feel now comparable to the pain I would feel if the current regime were to stay in power? Is the pain that I am feeling now a high price to pay for the happiness I would feel if we succeeded in our struggle?
I know the answers to these questions. And not only I. Thousands who have been protesting this month know it too. This is why we shall continue. This is why we shall win.
Branimir Jovanovic
Economic researcher and activist from Skopje
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