Albanian PR in Macedonia

Many of Macedonia's citizens believe that their government has found itself under the huge pressure of the world community because of the fact that it had lost the information war to Albania’s gunmen. The “civilized countries” forced Macedonia to “cooperate” with Albanians, having bought into the well thought out PR. The majority of the Macedonians think that the Western press is pro-Albanian and and pro-Islam. the Albanians’ final goal is to set up an Islamic state in the center of Europe, and they are ready to use the “humanitarian” Western press for that.

Reality Macedonia wrote that the Western press portrayed the situation in black and white, showing its sympathy to the Albanians. Spokesman for the Macedonian government Georgy Triantafilovsky says that the Albanians have a very well considered plan of action for the Western journalists. He said that Albanians contact either CNN or BBC every time conflicts were happen. After which, the whole world was watches how the well-armed governmental troops “wage war” with the poor guerrillas. Nobody has called them “terrorists” in the West. The Albanians have always been called “the ethnic rebels.”

Portraying this black and white picture of the events, the European and the American journalists sometimes found themselves in ridiculous situations. There was a report published by Reality Macedonia site telling such curious stories. When a CNN group was in Albanian Skopje sector, the curious children were looking at the foreigners through the bars of the fence. Those kids were described as internee Albanian teenagers.

Emil Atanasovsky, a member of the National Democratic Forum, said that one of the reports that was broadcast on the Western television depicted “a fight” between the Albanians and Macedonians. The tanks were on Macedonia's side in that report, although the governmental troops had never had any tanks. So it was not clear who was fighting with whom, but everything was “explained” to the Western viewer in a way that was good for the Albanians. The result of such biased reports was the disappointment of many people of the Balkans with the objectiveness of the Western journalists.

Sergey Borisov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov