Critics in FYROM fault MANU for inciting Albanophobia and hatred

in FYROM news / by Admin / on September 23, 2009 at 3:34 pm /

From Dnevnik, 22 Sep 09, p 13
by Saso Kokalanov: “Sehtanski for Academician”

We [FYRO]Macedonians are autochthonous champions in the historic discipline of shooting oneself in the foot and the newly-published MANU [FYRO]Macedonian Encyclopedia is an anthological example of this. [..] now, the most senior scholarly institution in the country has managed to shoot a big bullet in the hardly healed foot after a single attempt.

Instead of being a text that will portray the richness of the different cultures living in our country[…] the thick and controversy-strewn encyclopedia incites hatred. […] Stereotypes reign supreme in the encyclopedia. We are autochthonous, whereas they are the immigrants. Our folks were the partisans, whereas theirs were the Balists. We inhabited these areas using “fine” manners and breathing through straws under the Danube, whereas they terrorized the domicile population. We are [FYRO]Macedonians and they are referred to by some as Shiptars.

Why have our country’s “greatest minds” felt the urge to make such distinctions? Why denigrate your fellow citizens? This is really beyond comprehension. There is no other explanation but the one that the Serbian syndrome known as Dobrica Cosic (who wanted “all Serbs in a single country”), as a results of which hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the region, has survived in the form of an epidemic in our academy, feeding the nationalistic viruses and attacking the fiber of our democracy at its weakest spots.
Of course, the entire academy should not be stigmatized over the “encyclopedia” project. […]

The encyclopedia’s editor-in-chief, academician Blaze Ristovski, is very knowledgeable about the personality and deeds of Krste Petkov Misirkov. So, to paraphrase Misirkov, I want to ask academician Ristovski, “do you see what you’ve achieved with the few completely unneeded chapters?” You have turned the Macedonian issues into topics for international crisis experts, made the United States and Great Britain — our two best proven supporters over the past period — our state enemies, and fertilized the soil for the marginalized nationalists to act….

[…]A “straubal” press release signed by Vanco Sehtanski’s TMRO party arrived in our office yesterday. The TMRO has assumed the task and entitled itself to tell the scholars and the public who the Albanians are. Noting that the Gegh and Toska are two different peoples, who have nothing in common genetically, it argues that the Toska are actually Romanized [FYRO]Macedonians, whereas the Gegh are a tribe that the Turks brought over from Caucasian Albania– present day Dagestan — back in 17th century. Apparently, the Gegh are characterized by “vendetta, cattle-breeding, and exceptional aggressiveness.” This is to say that the Albanians are actually from Dagestan, the Greeks are Africans, the Bulgarians are Tatars — only we have been planted here by God himself. Normally, we ignore political fools, but sadly, mental exhibitions of this kind have become mainstream. If Albanophobia is becoming an entry ticket to MANU’s influential circles, why don’t you elect Sehtanski an academician and rename MANU as TMANU, that is, as the Secret [FYRO]Macedonian Anti-Albanian Nationalist Institution.

[…]With its latest capital project, the MANU has earned itself an encyclopedia entry in this sad [FYRO]Macedonian film.