Anti-Albanian shouts in Kumanovo, Speaker of Parliament Gashi: Institutions must find the culprits and punish them
Express newspaper
25/08/2025 16:03
“Institutions must find the guilty and punish them. Let people know that there can be no such calls, because as we saw, they caused public concern.” This is the comment of the Speaker of the Parliament of the Republic of North Macedonia, Afrim Gashi, when asked by Portalb.mk how he comments on the lack of clarity in the hate speech case for a month now, considering the fact that he came out with a reaction immediately after the anti-Albanian calls at a sports match in Kumanovo.
Speaker of Parliament Gashi stressed that sports fields should not be the arena of political battles. He welcomed the initiation of the prosecution’s procedure to clarify the case but did not comment on why. The case still has no epilogue., but ordered that the competent institutions they must react.
“According to my information, this is the first time that the prosecution has initiated proceedings for such cases. We all know that since the 90s, sports fields have been arenas for political battles. There needs to be a reaction. My message is that we should leave sports fields to the athletes, the fans, and not to convey political messages,” said Gashi.
We recall that the first of the assembly, Afrim Gashi along with other heads of state, such as: the president Gordana Siljanovska-Davkoka and the prime minister Christian Mickoski had condemned the case of August 3, 2025 when in the pre-qualification match for the World Basketball Championship between North Macedonia and Romania in Kumanovo, insulting chants against Albanians were heard such as “Let the damned Albanians understand, the Macedonian name will not disappear, pure, pure, pure Macedonia”, “A good Albanian is a dead Albanian”, and “Gas chamber for Albanians”.
These insults were made in the presence of the Prime Minister. Christian Mickoski, the mayor of Kumanovo, Maxim Dimitrievski, Minister of the Interior Pance Toshkovski, the Deputy Prime Minister Ivan Stoilkovic and other senior state officials.
Today, when we are already in the fourth week since the incident occurred, there is no information about the resolution of the case.