Amnesty International urges FYROM to stop its attempts to extinguish freedom of expression

in FYROM Human Rights, FYROM news / by D-Mak / on July 7, 2011 at 2:36 am /

Amnesty International urged FYROM’s government to stop its attempts to extinguish freedom of expression. This event took place after three of the country’s newspapers, namely the newspapers Spic, Vreme, and Koha e re, were shut down.

The aforementioned newspapers were all owned by the detained media tycoon Velija Ramkovski and were closed down at the weekend, ostensibly due to unpaid taxes demanded by the government.

The Amnesty International’s Director for Europe and Central Asia, Nicola Duckworth stated, “These closures, the amounts demanded, and the conditions of payment, appear to be politically motivated. This is not an isolated incident but a confrontation with media critical of the government that has been going on for over a year. These closures are looking more and more like an all-out assault on freedom of expression.”