In letters sent today to the President and Prime Minister of Macedonia, Human Rights Watch denounced a recent campaign to discredit and intimidate the Macedonian Helsinki Committee, a local human rights organization.
In statements by government officials and government-controlled media, the Helsinki Committee and its president Mirjana Najcevska have been branded "state enemies" because of their human rights reporting, especially on violations by the Macedonian police. The Minister of the Interior, Ljube Boskovski, has been leading these verbal assaults.
"These attacks are a threat to the rights of all Macedonians," said Elizabeth Andersen, executive director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "They come from the highest levels of the Macedonian government and have a clear aim: to silence the critical reporting of a leading human rights group."
Although this is not the first time Macedonian authorities have targeted human rights organizations, this recent wave of intimidation seems to have been triggered by leaks of the Helsinki Committee's forthcoming annual report.
Minister Boskovski and others have been particularly hostile to the Helsinki Committee's work on the protection of rights of Macedonia's ethnic Albanian citizens. Human rights groups have criticized the Macedonian police for numerous rights violations, including unlawful arrests, torture, and mistreatment of ethnic Albanians. Boskovski has direct authority over the Macedonian police forces.
The conflict over the Helsinki Committee's work comes at a time when many Macedonians and the international community are trying to address long-standing minority rights and other human rights problems through implementation of the Ohrid peace agreement.
Human Rights Watch has conveyed its concerns to representatives of the international community, including the Chair-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama, who visits Skopje today.
