DRAGAN MISHEV 

 In a Facebook comment regarding the case of the “suitcase” left at the VMRO Square, veteran journalist and columnist Branko Trickovski wrote: “The biggest pre-election stunt would be if they stuffed the dismembered body of Hristijan in the suitcase!”, for which, as he himself says, he expressly received an invitation for an urgent informative conversation. 

 CIVIL’s legal team assessed that Trickovski was most likely reported for endangering security — under Article 144 of the Criminal Code, after which he was summoned for questioning by the police, as part of the procedure following the report.  

Trickovski himself, in another Facebook post, says that during the informative conversation at the station, they were maximally correct and acted within the legal protocols for such cases. In his explanation during the statement, when asked whether in his comment about “Hristijan” he meant Mickoski, he replied: No, Hristijan is a general name for manipulators who spread an atmosphere of fear and insecurity, using their media hounds who try to drive all the sheep into the same pen. 

 However, the broader context allows for such an interpretation, whereby the use of the name Hristijan can be taken as referring to the Prime Minister, Hristijan Mickoski. And up to this point, everything is fine. It can even be concluded that the institutions are doing their job. But is that really the case, and are the institutions not acting selectively, from case to case, taking swift action only when it concerns Hristijan Mickoski — the Prime Minister.  

The speed is particularly noticeable now, during the election campaign, when the image and work of the Prime Minister must not be “smeared”. And does this mean that the institutions have engaged in a hunt for negative comments on social media about the Prime Minister and the government?

How else to interpret such a drastic change from the previous inaction of the institutions regarding the thousands of serious threats against CIVIL and its immediate leadership? “Bullet in the head”, “Is there anyone to put metal in Deralla?”, “people’s court,” “shooting”, are a regular repertoire of the hate speech and calls for liquidation against “those from CIVIL,” which remained without reaction from the institutions and unprocessed, while the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office, after nine whole months of the complaint filed on 24.01.2024, managed at the beginning of October to send a letter with a notification stating that on 17.09 it had managed to assess that the threatening message “Be visible, you nit, the bullet will reach you sooner or later”, from the profile of a certain “Aleksandar Antić”, directed at the editor of Civil Media, was, as stated in the response — “journalistic bickering, without a specific intention or purpose, to issue a threat, nor to intimidate anyone, especially not the author of the text, Deralla.” 

Even more sadder is that there were no reactions from journalist associations, most likely afraid for their status with the new government.

As they say, justice is blind, in our case, one could easily add: also slow and selective.

In cooperation with CIVIL Hybrid Threats Monitoring Team (CHTM)

Translated by: N. Cvetkovska