SKOPJE, 25.12.2019 – The Association of Journalists of Macedonia today promoted two publications. The first concerned the attacks on journalists that have taken place in the last five years and is titled: “Chronicle of the (un)safety of journalists“. The authors of this publication are journalist Zoran Ivanov and the lawyer Igor Markovski. This publication describes all registered attacks on journalists, and gives a legal review as to how journalists better understand their rights in front of the state institutions.
The second publication is titled “Attacks on journalists and media workers on April 27”. As the title says, the main topic of this publication is the attacks on journalists that took place in the Parliament of North Macedonia on April 27th. Through the testimonies of attacked journalists and statements by almost all political actors, the authors Dushica Mrgja, Enis Murtezi and Hristina Belovska tried to describe what exactly happened on that “bloody Thursday” in the Parliament. The main remark in the publication concerns the failure of the judiciary to deal with attacks on journalists, in compare to the verdicts already made on the attackers of politicians.
The President of AJM, Mladen Chadikovski spoke at the promotion of the publications, and said that the public, citizens and political parties should understand that journalists should not and must not be attacked for performing their professional tasks. “On the other hand, the institutions of North Macedonia, and in particular the judicial authorities should have processed these attacks as soon as possible in order to protect our colleagues from future attacks, and to protect the democracy in our country,” he said. Chadikovski said that this year there has been a positive trend in terms of attacks on journalists. “However, next year we will have parliamentary elections, and this means that we will have nervous people, a tense atmosphere in society and in the public discourse, and this often results in violence against our colleagues. We appeal to the political parties to lead their political battles peacefully, by having quality debates and through better presentation of their programs, rather than through street clashes and attacks on journalists and a critical public,“ said Chadikovski.
On the other hand the Executive Director of Association of Journalists of Macedonia, Dragan Sekulovski said that AJM will not forget the unsolved cases of attacks on journalists, cameramen and photographers and will insist on judicial resolution. “In the future, we will continue to work with the MOI, Public Prosecution, courts and the Ombudsman in order to build an institutional system that will guarantee the safety of media workers,” said Sekulovski.
