Filipče from Novo Selo: When the media lynching did not work, they physically went after the children

The leader of SDSM, Venko Filipče, stood in Novo Selo before a group of citizens and party representatives to condemn the physical attack on young people that took place the previous evening. The incident, he said, must not be reduced to a local scuffle, because it amounts to a reckoning with people who speak the truth out loud.

"An incident that should never have happened, but now that it has happened, it must not and shall not be passed over in silence," Filipče said, blaming the atmosphere in which the attack occurred on the organised structure around Hristijan Mickoski.

He placed the heart of the matter on the substance for which, in his words, the young people were attacked. "And the truth is that the water in Gostivar and in half the country is polluted and not fit for drinking," the SDSM leader said, repeating a problem he had warned about several times before and to which the institutions have so far offered no full answer.

Photo: SDSM / video recording of the statement

Filipče directed his sharpest assessment at the way critical voices are being silenced. "And when the media lynching by the organised criminal group no longer works, they physically went after the children," he said, describing it as a shift from pressure to open violence.

He called on the institutions to react without delay. "We demand an urgent investigation, an urgent reaction from the Ministry of the Interior, an urgent investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office into who those people were," Filipče said, insisting that the attackers be identified and held to account.

He also had a message for the young people who were attacked. "I am sending a message: the children are not alone. They were not alone last night, they are not alone today, and they will not be alone tomorrow," he said before those gathered.

Violence, according to Filipče, is not a sign of strength but of the opposite. "This is a sign that the government is frightened," the SDSM leader assessed, linking that fear to a situation in which, as he puts it, the water is not fit for drinking, the economy is stagnating, and on its European path the country has been reduced to the appendix of Europe.

He closed his statement with two short sentences that framed the entire message: "This government will not silence us" and "A time of truth and justice is coming."