Thousands of people gather daily in the center of Skopje, Macedonia to express their support for the president. Credit: Aleksandra Jolkina/IPS

By Frank Mulder
SKOPJE, Apr 18 2017 (IPS)

The political crisis in Macedonia is deepening. With the president and former coalition preventing the formation of a new government, the state threatens to disintegrate in a climate of corruption and nationalism.

The television is turned up loud in a hamburger shop in a suburb of Skopje called Šutka. The ethnic Albanian owner and his workers follow the parliamentary debate live. Their faces, however, are full of contempt. While the owner is preparing an impressively filled bread for less than a euro, he shakes his head despondently."Let's be open: the dispute with the EU about the name is partly the reason for all this mess." --Aleksander Kržalovski

“Those politicians are only getting more and more nationalistic,” one of his clients explains.

Outside we hear the call to prayer. The majority of the people here in Šutka are Muslim. A Roma woman with red-streaked hair is selling ten euro jeans from her market stall. A man with a fluffy salafi-like beard and prayer trousers sells knick-knacks ranging from facial masks and incense sticks to Albanian Korans from beneath a Zlatan Dab Pilsener umbrella.

Filibuster

It looks like nonsensical chatter, what happens on television, but it’s not. What we see is a so-called filibuster, which means politicians preventing any decision-making by just keeping on talking. The right-wing party VMRO-DPNME doesn’t want the social democrats to form a government because that would grant the Albanian minority too many rights.

This has had a disastrous effect on the small Balkan country, which a few years ago was still a promising economy. Since the collapse of Yugoslavia there haven’t been any serious tensions between the Macedonian orthodox majority (about one and a half million) and the Albanian Muslim minority (about half a million), except for limited clashes in 2001.

But corruption has grown since then, along with nationalist rhetoric. In this climate a kind of mini-Watergate scandal has broken out, starting two years ago. Leaked secret service documents showed that ruling VMRO politicians had tapped the phone conversations of 20,000 people, for dubious ends. The country burst out in revolt. Finally, last December, after protests and diplomatic pressure, new elections were held.

VMRO won most of the seats again. Yet, they didn’t manage to form a coalition. The quarrelling Albanian parties, brought together by Albania, decided to strike a coalition deal with the social democrats. To which President Gjorge Ivanov, member of the VMRO, responded with a veto, and the VMRO parliamentarians with a filibuster. Their motive is, they say, that the new coalition wants to accept Albanian as official language, and they will not allow this to happen.

‘Captured state’

“It went very well in Macedonia,” says Samuel Žbogar, ambassador on behalf of the European Union in Skopje. “But the last few years we’ve seen a serious backsliding. We call it a ‘captured state’. Independent institutions like the judiciary are used by politicians.”

The European Union itself is partly to be blamed for the misery. For years, Macedonia has been tempted to enact reforms with a carrot called EU Membership, but year after year Greece has demanded that the country change its name first, for fear of territorial claims on its own Macedonia province.

“People feel deeply hurt,” a source within the European representation in the country says. “They have long been a EU candidate member but are overtaken by other countries.” It is an invitation for countries like Russia to step into the void, although this consists more of vocal instead of financial support – so far.

Fake majority

Thousands of people, mostly grey-haired, gather daily in the center of Skopje to express their support for the president. “Ma-ke-donia! Ma-ke-donia!” they chant, waving red-yellow flags and whipped up by nationalist songs.

“We reject the fake majority of the social democrats and the Albanian parties,” says one young demonstrator, dressed in red and yellow and wearing a 130-year-old cap from anti-Ottoman rebels. He smells strongly of of alcohol but is sure about his case. “The Albanian parties are directed by Albania. We can’t let a neighboring country decide what happens here, can we? They want to create a Great Albania. They want the Macedonian country to disappear. We cannot let this happen.”

This is nonsense, says Nasser Selmani, an ethnic Albanian and president of the Association of Journalists in Macedonia. “I am a Macedonian, this is my country. I don’t belong to Albania, I belong here.” Yet others have more to lose if the state should collapse, he explains. “We have Albania with which we have good relations. But what do the ethnic Macedonians have? Do you think there is anyone who would acknowledge their identity? Greece and Bulgaria won’t.”

The breakdown of the state is not unthinkable. Because of the stalemate, the necessary decisions can’t be made anymore. In a few months, local elections are scheduled. If they don’t take place, the local authorities lose their legitimacy, too.

What also will end in June is the mandate of the Special Prosecutor researching the wiretapping scandal. This is the real reason that politicians have hijacked the country, insiders say. They want to escape prosecution by any means possible.

“They are using the fear of Albanians for their own interest,” says Selmani. “They are using more and more nationalist language. The orthodox church is also promoting this. The cathedral in Skopje is even the gathering place for the daily protests.”

Conservatives

In the big cathedral, however, beneath beautiful icons, all looks peaceful. Evening prayer is silently attended by not more than four people. Even among orthodox believers the Macedonian church, which has declared itself independent from the Serbian orthodoxy, is known as a very nationalistic branch. But demonstrators are not there.

A young orthodox priest in Skopje is willing to explain what he thinks about the current crisis, if only on the basis of anonymity. He serves tea with pieces of Turkish fruit. “We have a separation between church and state. We don’t call for demonstrations here and we don’t give any voting advice. That’s forbidden. But if you ask me personally, I’m against Albanian as an official language. I originally come from a region without Albanians. What if all public servants would be obliged to speak Albanian because it’s an official language? That would be impossible. Our only language is Macedonian.”

On the wall behind the black-robed priest there is a small Macedonian flag with an orange-black Saint George Ribbon, a Russian nationalist symbol. When I ask him what he hopes what will happen, he says, “I hope the crisis will soon be over. That we can live in peace with each other again, without politics being between the people.” The priest doesn’t seem radical, rather very conservative.

Alexander

Through the window of a restaurant in Skopje I look down at the paragon of nationalistic Balkan kitsch, made possible by millions of taxpayers’ money. Between the statues of the Macedonian hero Alexander the Great, to the left, and the Father of Alexander, to the right, we see nobody less than the mother of Alexander, in fourfold. Alexander in her belly, Alexander at her breast, Alexander on her lap, and Alexander around her neck. It’s all completely over the top. It’s the way the current leaders want to bring the people together, at least the ethnic Macedonians.

Inside the restaurant I have a conversation with Aleksander Kržalovski, leader of the Macedonian Centre for International Cooperation, which is the second largest NGO of the country and funder of many small NGOs. He is critical of the current nationalistic wave, he says.

“But it doesn’t make sense to demonize the more conservative population. Many left-wing organisations are very radical. They don’t want to work with fascists, they say. We, instead, believe in cooperation. It’s necessary to bridge the divide between different groups.

“To be honest, it’s unfair to blame right-wing politicians for everything,” Kržalovski continued. “The social democrats use very polarizing rhetoric as well. And many Albanians show no respect for the progress we’ve seen, the rights they have got. Many don’t want to wave the Macedonian flag or sing the national anthem. That raises suspicion. Some people have seen their house burnt down by ethnic Albanians three times, in 2001. And now they see them having a much higher birth rate. It’s understandable that people have fear.”

This doesn’t mean that we have to accept corruption, he says. “Impunity has to end now, that’s very important. But let’s not blame one party. And let’s be open: the dispute with the EU about the name is partly the reason for all this mess. We see that reflected in the diminishing support for the EU in the polls that we do. The EU clearly hasn’t done the job.”

By Jo Baker
LONDON, Jan 7 2016 (IPS)

It is a grim fact that prisoners in most countries suffer from poorer health than non-prisoners, and that their right to health is not always protected. But for certain groups these rights can be even more elusive. Such is the case for women.

Jo Baker

For me, this was starkly illustrated during a visit to the clinic of a large women’s jail in the southern Philippines. Here, a very thin woman lay curled and still on a narrow wooden bench. Her hands were cradling her taut, bloated stomach, her eyes tightly closed. The nurse explained that she was an addict, arrested while heavily pregnant for drug possession (a sentence that keeps the country’s women’s jails lamentably stocked), and that her baby had died days earlier in a government hospital because of a condition related to her drug use, after a complicated labour. Being understaffed and short on medicine and beds in the prison, the best treatment she could offer the woman on her return, as she faced her withdrawal, post-labour pain, grief, separation from family, and possible years awaiting trial, were paracetamol, kind words and a bench. Hers would be a particular and gendered kind of purgatory.

In speaking with imprisoned women and healthcare practitioners across five countries, our research team commonly found harmful responses and barriers to healthcare that existed because the inmates were women. These included women who were imprisoned in Jordan while recovering from brutal gender-based violence (including honour crimes and rape), without adequate treatment or rehabilitation; women who prepared for and recovered from childbirth in dirty rooms with little more than substandard prison rations, water and soap; and women who were isolated and punished because of attempts to self-harm or commit suicide. “One girl used the edge of a seafood shell on her wrists,” recounted an inmate in the Philippines. “They scolded her. If you want to die, go ahead, do it now!”

These responses are of course unlikely to be particular only to these countries.

International standards (including the Bangkok Rules) now recognize that because women commonly face certain risk factors and backgrounds, they require a gender-specific framework for healthcare. More women than men suffer from particular diseases, including HIV, hepatitis and some cancers. They have differing sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs, including those relating for example, to birth, abortion and the menopause. They are more susceptible to particular mental health problems. Studies have found self-harm in prison to be up to ten times higher among women than among men, and suicide to also be proportionally higher. This list goes on.

Women (especially those in conflict with the law) are also, crucially, more likely to have been victims of sustained gender-based violence and sexual abuse. Yet prisons, which are increasingly taking in women, are rarely equipped to respond to these forms of trauma. As I was told quietly by one prison healthcare worker, gesturing to a courtyard of around 20 women. “Almost all the women here are mothers, and a lot have maltreatment and molestation in their histories. I can look around and count more than ten women who have been raped. Some have been prostituted by their families. Then drug use comes in and makes it a vicious cycle.”

These and other cultural factors lead to a different sense of shame, which can also work as a barrier to healthcare. For example inmates in Jordan, Zambia and the Philippines told me that they often avoided reporting urinary tract infections and SRH problems to male health staff. Yet some prisons for women don’t employ female doctors, and these issues remain unrecognized, and sometimes debilitating.

My research findings with DIGNITY (see our comparative study here) therefore stress the urgent need for every prison and place of detention to follow a framework for healthcare that is gender-responsive and trauma-informed – one that treats women’s specific health needs, and trains staff accordingly. In just a few facilities did we find gestures towards this.

But not all gender-sensitive health responses are medical. The traditional prison model – designed as a harsh criminal justice response to violent men – remains the basis for many institutions detaining groups that are neither violent, nor male. In the facilities where women told me of harsh disciplinary structures, negative relationships between staff and inmates, and their isolation from caring relationships, they tended to report very low morale, forms of depression, and other signs of serious struggle, such as self harm and hunger strike. This was markedly different in facilities (such the one described here in Albania) that connected the women with the outside community – particularly their children – and gave them tools to cope, learn, communicate and prepare for the future.

Meanwhile, exercise is known to be important to health and morale, and is a right of prisoners under international law (see the Mandela Rules). Yet only in one of five countries, the Philippines, were detained women encouraged and able to exercise every day. In the other countries, exercise and sports facilities of some kind were common only in prisons for men.

Many of our findings on health fell in line with those observed by the former UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women in her 2013 report on women’s incarceration, and they indicated clear and harmful examples of discrimination. Yet in reviewing issues raised by UN treaty body reports, we found women’s health to largely be a gap: UN experts are not giving this area consideration.

The human rights of these women entitle them to better, and must be championed, internationally and in their own countries. As once said by Dostoevsky, society must be judged by the way that it treats its prisoners. Or rather, and as told to me by one mother and survivor of domestic violence, sentenced to life in a Zambian prison: “If you’ve offended, certain things you must accept. But I don’t deserve to pass through some of these things. I came to prison healthy. I’m not intending to leave sick.”

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