People who yell out “Shqiptars in gas chambers”, “Good Shqiptar, dead Shqiptar”, “Slavic B*****s”, “We will crucify you”…cannot be forgiven…as long as they continue with that and believe it’s all right. Those who curse and insult, those who call us traitors and call on pogrom, rape and lynch cannot be forgiven.

You can forgive a person who has asked for forgiveness. Or reduce his punishment. You cannot forgive someone who doesn’t feel guilty for his wrongdoings. It’s absurd to think that there is room for forgiving an extremist, sadist, clero-fascist who claims he has performed a heroic act by attacking

another person with the purpose to kill him brutally, with pools, fists and kicking in the head, while shouting curses and the most vulgar swearing in the rush of unspeakable hatred.

Noble and deeply humane is the need to forgive even the worst of crimes, yes. It’s human to commit sin, and it’s even more human to forgive. However, only when the perpetrator is aware that what he has done is wrong. There’s no reason to forgive a person who is not aware or consciously refuses to admit a crime. Forgiving is a moral and social category, but it has nothing to do with the law. You can forgive the criminal, but he certainly has to serve his sentence. The court can reduce the punishment, but the record for the committed crime remains, the victim remains a victim.

This country has to go through a process of denazification. A strong movement has to be led in which people who for years have been arguing and hated each other need to look each other in the eyes and shake hands, to admit and then to forgive each other. We need to see what kind of role the political parties have played, but also the religious communities, the schools, intellectuals, artists, the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts…To extract the entire residue on the surface and to say goodbye to divisions, hatred and discrimination. To build a new culture, once we tear down and bury all the filth the criminals and sociopaths have nested in our lives.

Many countries have carried out such processes of reconciliation in society. That’s called facing the past. In the South Africa Republic and in several other countries around the world, truth commissions wer formed, where violators, even criminals, in the presence of the victims and interested people, sometimes the media as well, described their actions and requested reconciliation. Criminals who had committed murder or had beaten people, were not let off unpunished, but were forgiven.

Macedonia needs such a process. Only in this way we will provide long-term and sustainable peace, internal harmony. Only in this way we will develop as a country, a small one, with a decreasing number of inhabitants, but a decent and desirable place, at least for getting old…

All of us individually and society as a whole, should make a decision to forgive and to leave the ugly events in the past. The memories and sorrow will remain, the loss of human lives and impaired health of people are irreversible, but we can try to leave that behind us. Nonetheless, the pain should be expressed, loudly and sincerely.

Above all, responsibility has to be admitted. Only in this way we can stop being victims, feel like victims and stop accusing others. We need to take a look at the presence, to try to jointly enjoy what is now and here. Only after all of that we will be able to forgive. To forgive them and to forgive ourselves.

Until then, I will not forgive them. No one can forgive them. Not in my name!