Xhabir Deralla, President of CIVIL, North Macedonia on the panel “History and future of uncompromising commitment to democracy, human rights, and media freedoms” at the Conference “Defending Democracy and Human Rights”, December 12, 2024 Skopje.
I will just make a couple of points there about the truth. It’s only one. I’m sorry to say that. There is one truth based on facts. There are 100 million truths about one fact, but only if people’s minds have been distorted, manipulated, oppressed, intimidated, blurred, or threatened. But the truth is there. Objective, one truth. Russia is the aggressor. Ukraine is defending itself.
Or in our everyday life, the police could be beating peaceful demonstrators. And then a certain prime minister would come out and say, the police has been defending themselves from the violent demonstrators who actually have fell victim of foreign agents like Santa Claus, for instance. I’ve heard last night the evening with our friends from Germany and Italy and UK and Europe that there was this Duma member who proposed that Santa Claus needs to be banned in Russia because he’s a symbol of foreign agents.
And these are facts that this happened. And you can’t escape it no matter what you do. I’ve heard here many facts all day. And they cannot be moved. They can be manipulated. They can be distorted. They can be shut down.
Our media platform is under cyber attack every day and night. Now it’s even cheap to do it. At the time, we costed those who were attacking us 7,000 euros per day. Now we cost them 200 euros because of the advancement of the technology and the availability of technology. So invest a little, gain a lot. That’s the main line of business of the propagandists. They invest very little.
It’s very easy to cause nationalism, hatred. It’s very easy to turn youngsters and even minors into cannon fodder of hate and violence like sports fan clubs. And it starts there. It can start anywhere and then arrive to what I heard here is called their victory because we retreated. We got blindfolded by fear, by commercial interests, economic interests, or just because of some prejudices.
And we cannot do that. We cannot allow ourselves anymore because we have no time anymore. We ran out of time. And well, thank you. And your words about our work, not mine, but our work still echoes in my mind, sorry. But I just want to say that the frontline is in Ukraine. People are being killed there, being kidnapped. There is a systemic use of torture, rape, and looting civilian targets. Also, the frontline is not finishing there.
If we break, help is not going to come. If we break, politicians will say, well, the polls say that I should stop supplying Ukraine with weapons, I should stop supplying North Macedonia with civil society institutional building grants, or I should stop sending humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. Because the polls say so. And the polls depend on how much people believe in what they see or how much it is blurred by those that have interest to win, to the enemies of democracy and human rights.
Therefore, thanks to the great advice of quite a few people, amongst them many are in this room, CIVIL, to answer your question, will intensify its work across the borders in the region, and not only in the region of the Western Balkans, but in the region beyond the borders of Western Balkans, which is in trouble. Let me reiterate that, I think.
And also, CIVIL plans to enter the war against war in Ukraine, or at least that’s the working title of our efforts, because after the war there is another war. We’ve seen it in Bosnia, we’ve seen it in Kosovo, that the war after the war lasts even longer than any war. We had a six months long skirmish in comparison to what it was in Bosnia and in Kosovo and in Croatia. But we still live through it every day and night. So that’s what we want to do, to go there, offer our knowledge, offer our hearts and our minds, and we’ll be available to any spot in the world that our knowledge and experience and our commitment will be requested.
At the end, I’m certain that Putin will lose eventually. What we need to do is not to let Putinism win, and that’s the greatest risk. Putin will fall. Putinism must fall too.
D. Tahiri
Camera: Atanas Petrovski/Igor Chadinovski
Editing: Arian Mehmeti
Photography: Robert Atanasovski/CIVIL
CONFERENCE, FULL VIDEO, Streamed live on December 12, 2024:
https://youtube.com/live/1f2Eo1ZXEQ0
PHOTO ARCHIVES: #DefendingDemocracy, Panel 1: Democracy under Siege
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.994398716055531&type=3
#DefendingDemocracy, Panel 2: The Rise of Far-Right Nationalism
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.995019619326774&type=3
#DefendingDemocrcy Panel 3: Countering Authoritarianism
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.995771969251539&type=3
#DefendingDemocracy conference, Panel 4: Commitment to democracy
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.996548069173929&type=3
#DefendingDemocracy Conference (overall)
https://www.facebook.com/media/set?set=a.993726732789396&type=3
#DefendingDemocracy – workshop and meeting with the press
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.992924672869602&type=3
#DefendingDemocracy PRESS CONFERENCE
For more information on the Conference, please visit the special website DefendingDemocracy
