VMRO-DPMNE President Hristijan Mickoski enters into personal confrontation and with slanders and threats attacks journalist Deralla, otherwise President of CIVIL – Center for Freedom, an organization for human rights and freedoms, is written in CIVIL’s announcement sent to the media today, which we present here today in its entirety.

Related to the text of the INDEX (index.mk) portal, titled “Mickoski bought and renovated a house in Kozle worth one million euros”, posted on Facebook, Mickoski mentions him, by name and last name, “…media close to DUI (person employed in the cabinet of Artan Grubi) and SDSM (Xhabir Deralla) to apologize to me for the lies they have published

In his post, he insinuates, manipulates and threatens the media and Deralla, by which he directly threatens freedom of speech and media freedom.

The slanders and discrediting against them also involves Mickoski unfoundedly labeling them and associating the mentioned media with political parties, hence directly attacking their credibility.

Such an attack, which comes from the highest position of a powerful and numerous political party, in itself, represents a threat both to the freedom of speech and to the safety of journalists, in this case, directly to mentioned Deralla, namely, the media against which he writes in the post on the social networks.

Memories of the trampling on human rights, freedom of speech and media freedoms that were performed by the same party during its rule from 2006 to 2016 are still fresh. This should be an alarm for the whole society. We must not allow the media to bow their head to the regime drive of Mickoski or any other politician who will try to threaten freedom of speech.

CIVIL – Center for Freedom calls on journalist associations, regulatory and self-regulatory bodies, as well as civil society organization for protection of human rights and freedoms to condemn and reject such inappropriate behavior by the President of VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski.

CIVIL will also turn to diplomatic missions and international organization and institutions and will seek protection of the media and journalist Xhabir Deralla from further public lynching carried out by radical political groups and parties in the country that has been lasting for years, and in this case, the very president of a parliamentary political party, VMRO-DPMNE, also joining the public lynching.

Translation: N. Cvetkovska