{"id":314586,"date":"2017-04-28T06:26:08","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T06:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=314586"},"modified":"2017-04-28T06:26:08","modified_gmt":"2017-04-28T06:26:08","slug":"brawl-breaks-out-after-protestors-storm-macedonia-parliament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=314586","title":{"rendered":"Brawl breaks out after protestors storm Macedonia parliament"},"content":{"rendered":"

Protesters stormed into Macedonia’s parliament on Thursday after an ethnic Albanian was elected as speaker.<\/p>\n

A brawl broke out injuring at least 10 people, including the Social Democrat leader Zoran Zaev, who was left with blood pouring down his face.<\/p>\n

The protesters, supporters of ex-Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s VMRO party, are demanding new elections.<\/p>\n

Politics in the former Yugoslav republic has been deadlocked since an inconclusive election in December.<\/p>\n

But the crisis goes back further, to a phone-tapping scandal two years ago.<\/p>\n

Mr Zaev has created a coalition with ethnic Albanian parties, but his attempts to form a government have been blocked by the president.<\/p>\n

Macedonian nationalists have been protesting on the streets since Mr Zaev tried to form the coalition.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Ethnic Albanians make up around a quarter of the country’s population.<\/p>\n

The people who stormed parliament were angered by the coalition’s decision to elect Talat Xhaferi as speaker.<\/p>\n

They fear moves to improve the status of Albanians threaten Macedonian unity.<\/p>\n

Some of the 200 protesters were masked. Witnesses saw broken glass on the floor and traces of blood in hallways.<\/p>\n

Police fired stun grenades to disperse protesters and allow politicians to exit the parliament building.<\/p>\n

\"Many<\/span><\/figure>\n

A statement from the US Embassy in Macedonia, published on Twitter, said: “We condemn the violence in the strongest possible terms.<\/p>\n

“It is not consistent with democracy and is not an acceptable way to resolve differences.”<\/p>\n

The secretary general of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, tweeted that he was “shocked” by the “attacks”.<\/p>\n

“All parties should respect democratic process and engage in dialogue, not violence,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

“Violence has NO place in Parliament. Democracy must run its course,” tweeted European Union Commissioner Johannes Hahn.<\/p>\n

Skopje has also seen regular protests against the coalition by demonstrators who believe it will damage the country’s national unity.<\/p>\n

Macedonia came close to civil war in 2001 after an Albanian uprising.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Protesters stormed into Macedonia’s parliament on Thursday after an ethnic Albanian was elected as speaker. A brawl broke out injuring at least 10 people, including the Social Democrat leader Zoran Zaev, who was left with blood pouring down his face. The protesters, supporters of ex-Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s VMRO party, are demanding new elections. Politics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[6634],"class_list":["post-314586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-macedonia-parliament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=314586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=314586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=314586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=314586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}