CIVIL press release

CIVIL – Center for Freedom urges hosts and organizers of family celebrations to replace guns and bullets with legal ways of celebrating, such as fireworks handled by qualified personnel. Celebratory gunfire is forbidden by law and is part of a tradition that belongs in past centuries when people had no phones and other communication tools. It is primitive, dangerous and illegal. CIVIL appeals to the MOI to take specific measures and to introduce strict sanctions for the use of weapons as part of celebrations.

Each year, CIVIL as an organization that is part of the International Action Network for combatting illicit arms, continuously issues series of recommendations on arms control. Gruevski’s government was silent to CIVIL’s recommendations in the past years, and also stopped the projects on prevention and reforms in the police, part of which were dedicated to these topics.

The same rules, the same law, apply today as well in Macedonia. The situation has not changed… There is shooting!

CIVIL has been continuously alerting the public and the institutions on topics and events related to arms control in the past 19 years, and is carrying out a campaign for strengthening public awareness on overcoming the cult of weapons and violence in the country.

Unfortunately, in Macedonia even celebrations and joyful moments in the everyday lives of citizens end with injured persons or loss of human lives!

It is high time for stakeholders in the domain of society, the institutions and the Government to take serious steps for overcoming the cult of weapons and other problems related to weapons. Arms control is not just a police task, but it is also part of long-term and multidisciplinary measures for dealing with the cult of weapons.

CIVIL Communication Team