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Macedonia In Shock After Killings And Riots
BITOLA, Macedonia, May 2 (News Agencies) - After two nights of the worst ethnic rioting in recent memory, Macedonia's second-largest city, Bitola, was still picking up the pieces Wednesday and wondering if there was more to come.
Mob violence erupted late Monday after the funerals of four local policemen killed in an ambush in the north of the country by ethnic Albanian gunmen, who are fighting for more rights for their large minority community.
Tensions exploded into rioting after the funerals, with up to 700 Macedonian Slavs - who make up the majority in the country - rampaging through the city, trashing around 50 shops and leaving several in smoldering ruins.
Even a savings bank scandal two years ago, which ruined thousands in this city of 130,000 people - just two percent of them ethnic Albanians -, failed to provoke such a bitter reaction.
Rioters targeted ethnic Albanian Muslim and Macedonian shops, smashing, burning and looting.
The same scenes were repeated late Tuesday, when around 300 people turned out to try to finish off the mob's handiwork before security forces stepped in to ward off vandals and looters.
"And it will go on, because the government is not fighting for the rights of Macedonians," said one unemployed Macedonian man, aged 20, who described himself as a "great patriot" and predicted the formation of Macedonian paramilitary groups.
But the general tone here was more conciliatory.
"The whole city felt under attack after the killings" on Saturday of four local policemen and four soldiers near the northwestern town of Tetovo by ethnic Albanian gunmen, said Zoran Petar, a professor of French at Bitola University.
"But this reaction is not right, it is not the way to solve the problems at hand," he said, speaking of his fear of the mob rampaging uncontrolled on Monday night.
"I'm afraid the reaction will grow, but I remain an optimist," he said.
"Guns, forests and mountains are not the answer," he added, especially not in Bitola, which entered the last century as a major city of European Turkey and has retained much of its multi-cultural and intellectual heritage.
Not far from the city center, the Suzi restaurant, owned by ethnic Albanians, is a smoking ruin, gutted by fire.
Macedonian Dimitar Gramoski, 60, could not hide his anger.
"Why attack this restaurant owner? It's not his fault. This is just vandalism. We should have all got together, boarded buses and gone to Skopje to protest to the government," he said.
All that remains of an Albanian cake shop in the main pedestrian street is an overturned counter and a few piles of rubble.
In Skopje, the government echoed his sentiments, with spokesman Antonio Milososki saying it "vigorously condemns these incidents and the vandalism."
"We stress that this plays into the hands of the terrorists and undermines the security forces. There is no sense in victimizing innocent citizens," he said.
But locals said the Macedonians' anger spilled over into mob rule after ethnic Albanians fired off "victory shots" during the highly sensitive funeral ceremonies in the Orthodox church.
Mende Petkovski, a 25-year-old journalist for Radio Bitola, said, "no well-known Albanians attended the ceremonies, although they were made welcome."
But he added: "Bitola does not want a war, this was just a warning, an outburst of rage. In 10 days the shops will be rebuilt and Macedonians will be shopping in them."
After the violence of the past two days, Natasa Stefanovska, who works for a U.S. development agency, was not sure she would be able to go on working in ethnic Albanian villages which she used to visit on a daily basis.
"I hope these confrontations will stop," said Stefanovska, a friend of one of the policemen who was killed.
The authorities late Wednesday introduced a curfew on the restive city to be imposed between 11:00 pm and 5:00 am (2100 GMT and 0300 GMT), while Bitola mayor Zlatko Vrskovski called on citizens to "refrain from all forms of violence."
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