History Of Macedonia – FYROM denies entry to Greek Journalist

FYROM denies entry to Greek Journalist – Freedom of Press under Fire

in FYROM news / by Admin / on March 4, 2009 at 1:11 pm /

While the recent attack against Greek Tourists from Slavic Nationalists in FYROM continues to concetrate remarkably negative remarks against FYROM, a new incident took place today to be added in the series of hostile actions against Greek citizens.

Today, FYROM’s officials denied entry to the Greek Journalist Aggelos Aggelides, reporter of the Radio station City 99,5 and the newspaper “Eleftheros Typos”.

Mr Aggelides’ crime? He supposedly lacked the necessary credentials so he was refused entry, nomatter that in the past he had many news coverings in the State of FYROM, which makes the whole excuse as entirely unconvincing, if not silly.

The Union of Editors from Daily Newspapers of Macedonia-Thrace (ΕΣΗΕΜ-Θ) issued an announcement mentioning: “The Refusal of entry, for th first time, to a counterpart who has to his credit lots of journalistic missions to the neighbouring country, with pretext the lack of special visa, creates legitimate concerns over the expediency of this action and obviously constitutes interference to the free practice of the Reporting Work. “

The ΕΣΗΕΜ-Θ plans to inform the European and International Confederacy of Journalists for the specific issue.

The Nationalistic hysteria in FYROM against Greeks has no doubt taken its toll on press freedom, but it’s hard to see how targeting visiting journalists from Greece, deny them entry to excercise a basic principle of a Democratic society, namely Journalism, will make FYROM safer or promote the image of an open, free and European-oriented FYROM.

Freedom of the press is crucial to any democracy, and petty attempts to silence the messenger is no alternative.

By Jason