Macedonia Ex-Prisoners Demand Damages

Skopje – The Macedonian Association of Former Political Prisoners from the ex-Yugoslav era, have extended their demand for full rehabilitation and compensation from the state.

The association called “Goli Otok” named after the most notorious prison camp in the former socialist Yugoslavia and located in today’s Croatia, sent their letter to the Head of State, to the Prime Minister and to the Parliament.

The organisation warns that the legal acts upon which they were sentenced or tortured by the communist regime in the former Yugoslavia have still not been formally annulled since Macedonia gained its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.

They further claim that no form of rehabilitation or compensation has been offered by the Macedonian state since.

Starting from the late 1940s, and in the decades to come, many people were sentenced to prison or tortured in other ways due to their political and ideological beliefs that were at the time considered against the doctrine of the communist party and thus harmful to the state.    

“It is a historical fact that in that period a large number of citizens of the Republic of Macedonia had been deprived of freedom, persecuted, jailed, sent to prison camps and subjected to fierce reprisals because of their ideological and political opinion,” the Association says in their letter.

With the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, they have been raising their voices in each of the six successor countries that emerged. So far there are no official and relevant data regarding the number of former Yugoslav political prisoners in Macedonia.