[AMCC-News] Anti-Albanian riots in Macedonia like Kristallnacht: Albanian leader

[Mentor Cana]

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010502/1/o9j6.html
Wednesday May 2, 9:31 PM

Anti-Albanian riots in Macedonia like Kristallnacht: Albanian leader

SKOPJE, May 2 (AFP) - Macedonia's top ethnic Albanian leader on Wednesday
compared the backlash against his community following the killing of eight
Macedonian security officers to Nazi Germany's anti-Jewish Kristallnacht
attacks in 1938.

"It was a Kristallnacht (Night of Glass), like in 1938 when they attacked
Jewish shops. It's the same game," said Arben Xhaferi, head of the
Democratic Party of Albanians, a member of Macedonia's government
coalition.

He was talking after Macedonian rioters rampaged in the southern town of
Bitola following the funerals there of four of the eight officers killed by
ethnic Albanian rebels in the northwest of the country on Saturday.

"It's a typical, primitive tendency to collectivize guilt to blame all
Albanians," said Xhaferi.

After around 40 shops were trashed by furious mobs, vandalism and looting
dragged on into Tuesday night, state television said, adding that
Macedonian premises were also attacked. The government condemned the
rioting.

The November 1938 anti-Jewish attacks of Kristallnacht, which were
orchestrated by the ruling Nazi Party, took the form of nationwide attacks
on synagogues and Jewish businesses.

Around 100 Jews were killed and an estimated 30,000 arrested or deported
after the riots.

Xhaferi added that a cafe attacked by unidentified gunmen in the capital
was Albanian-owned and that a man shot dead there was also ethnic Albanian.

"There is no immediate possibility of war, but there is the possibility of
creating fronts between two groups and a big confusion," said Xhaferi,
calling the ethnic violence "a typical post-Yugoslav syndrome of
inter-ethnic polarisation."

The guerrillas' campaign across the northwest in March raised fears of a
new Balkans war, although the government claimed to have smashed the rebels
by the end of the month.

Xhaferi said dialogue between the ethnic Albanian community and the
authorities was "more difficult" after the latest events, a sentiment
already voiced by the main Macedonian coalition party, the VMRO-DPMNE.

"After these odious murders, dialogue becomes irrational. We think at the
moment it has been seriously thrown into question," said party spokesman
Igor Gievski after the eight officers were killed in what police described
as a "massacre".

The ethnic Albanian gunmen said it killed the men in self-defence and added
that the security forces had been warned not to enter areas near the
mountainous Kosovo border held by the guerrillas.

Xhaferi said the danger was rather that "people are starting to believe
they can't live together."

He condemned the violence and called for a broader coalition, reiterating
Albanian demands for the constitution to be changed, with the Albanian
community's legal status upped from minority to constitutive nation.