At the heart of the current unrest lies a long-running dispute over the use of the Albanian language in official state institutions.
North Macedonia has in recent days become the scene of a deepening political, ethnic and diplomatic crisis. A demand by Albanian law students to take their state bar exam in their mother tongue has triggered developments that expose serious fractures in society. The response of the state apparatus in Skopje, from the detention of young people near the Serbian border to a diplomatic démarche, paints a troubling picture of growing Albanophobia mixed with geopolitical reflexes from the past.
At the heart of the current unrest lies a long-running dispute over the use of the Albanian language in official state institutions. Albanian law students are legally required to take their state exam in Macedonian, even though they studied in Albanian. The protesters describe this as direct discrimination, a violation of the Constitution and the Law on the Use of Languages, and an artificial barrier to their professional development.
After the first demonstrations on April 6, tensions escalated on May 18 and 19. The marches in Skopje, held under the slogan “Unite with the students, all with one voice”, ended outside the Ministry of Justice, headed by Igor Filkov from the ZNAM movement. The protests led to clashes, injuries and arrests.
Political actors also seized on the crisis. The ruling Albanian party VLEN accused the opposition Democratic Union for Integration of inciting the students in search of political gain. DUI, for its part, accused the Albanian ministers in Hristijan Mickoski’s cabinet of failing to defend the rights of their own community.
The most alarming incident, which drew sharp international reactions, took place at the border. Around 40 Albanian students from Tirana, travelling to Skopje to support the protests, were blocked by North Macedonian authorities. They were first stopped at the Blato border crossing. They were later moved and held for eight hours in a bus in a village near Kumanovo, close to the Serbian border.
According to testimonies from those affected, they were left without food or clear explanations and subjected to “checks”. Only after the intervention of the Albanian embassy in Skopje were the students located and allowed to continue their journey.
Gazmend Bardhi, an MP from Albania’s Democratic Party, issued a harsh statement, calling Skopje’s actions “state abduction”. He condemned the detention of 18-to-20-year-old students as if they were criminals. Bardhi also criticized Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama for Tirana’s complete silence.
The pushing of Albanian citizens toward the Serbian border as a form of punishment and intimidation is a symbolic move that many read as a gesture toward Serbian geopolitical practices in the region.
The escalation also affected diplomatic relations. Albania’s ambassador to North Macedonia, Denion Meidani, became the target of both institutional pressure and ugly online attacks. The Foreign Ministry in Skopje summoned the Albanian diplomatic mission to deliver an oral démarche over Meidani’s statements in support of the student protests. Skopje described his actions as “potential interference in internal affairs”.
Nationalist Macedonian pages on social media erupted with vulgar insults and calls for the ambassador to go home. Unofficial reports also appeared that Meidani could be recalled early under pressure from VMRO-DPMNE and the VLEN coalition, both unhappy with his active position on the rights of Albanians.
The institutional rejection of the Albanian language is inevitably radicalizing the rhetoric of Albanian intellectuals. Writer and publicist Kim Mehmeti made a call that shocked Macedonian society: Albanians should stop learning and speaking Macedonian.
“There is a very practical way to make Albanian equal to Macedonian: to behave exactly like our Macedonian fellow citizens, who do not learn or speak Albanian. We should have our own institutions, where they will come with interpreters into their language, and we will go to theirs with interpreters into ours,” Mehmeti said.
“Perhaps those who love only a dead Albanian and who do not want a Macedonia where Albanian is also spoken will understand only this ‘language’. And perhaps only in this way will Macedonian anti-Albanian circles understand that our goodwill in recognizing all their ethnic and linguistic characteristics is not weakness, nor submission to Macedonian power. At the same time, it must be admitted that Macedonian rulers treat Albanians here with contempt because the VLEN vassals are conducting politics with their pants down,” he added.
The events of recent days clearly show that attempts to suppress the language rights of Albanians in North Macedonia do not lead to integration, but to sharp conflict. The combination of police arbitrariness at the borders, the movement of foreign citizens toward the Serbian border, diplomatic scandals and the radicalization of public speech creates a dangerous precedent. Skopje risks awakening the old ghosts of ethnic division by mixing the reflexes of a bygone authoritarian and pro-Serbian model with open institutional Albanophobia.
The symbiosis between Albanophobia and the serving of foreign geopolitical interests is most visible in the double standard of Hristijan Mickoski’s government. The demands of Albanian students and diplomatic support for them are branded as dangerous “foreign interference”, prompting border blockades and the summoning of ambassadors. At the same time, Skopje conveniently turns a blind eye to the direct operationalization of the “Serbian World” on Macedonian soil.
VMRO-DPMNE and structures close to the pro-Serbian and pro-Russian Deputy Prime Minister Ivan Stoilković are organizing Macedonian citizens, with a gathering point outside the Serbian consulate in Kumanovo on May 23, to attend a rally in support of Aleksandar Vučić. The Social Democratic Union openly described this as a betrayal of national interests.
Instead of a firm state response against this foreign influence network, Prime Minister Mickoski chose political evasion. Pressed to comment on the scandal, he hid behind empty phrases that the government “has no intention of interfering in the independent policies of other countries”, while quickly using the occasion to attack the Albanian opposition DUI once again, blaming it for the unresolved student issue of the past 20 years.
The destructive role of the “Serbian World” was also noted in the latest annual report of the European Parliament on North Macedonia. | BGNES