– I am not a number. “They should not give me my rights on the basis of numbers,” said Dehran Muratov, a journalist and CIVIL co-ordinator who spoke about the significance of the census for “smaller ethnic communities”.
– How many are fewer in number? We have not had a census for twenty years. We do not know how many inhabitants there are in the country. The smaller communities are the ones that migrate the most. “I am convinced that the number of emigrants will be higher than those living in the country,” Muratov said. He stressed that ethnicity is subject to manipulation in a number of respects.
– We had examples where Albanians are listed as Macedonians, Macedonians as Roma, in order to gain some rights. Everyone should be listed as they feel. If someone feels like a Roma, let them register as a Roma. If they feel like an Egyptian, let them be registered as an Egyptian, says Muratov.