The Ivan Mihailov Cultural Centre Association in Bitola has been deleted by the Central Registry of the Republic of North Macedonia, shows a check on the Registry’s website. The deletion came as a result of legislative amendments pertaining to associations and foundations, adopted unanimously by the legislature in Skopje, which ban retroactively the establishment of organizations, which with their name, agenda, goals or activities incite and call for aggression, nationality-, race- and religious-based hatred or other intolerance, genocide, extermination, incite, assist or approve fascism, Nazism, national socialism and the Third Reich.
The associations had a three-month deadline to change their names, which is something the Ivan Mihailov Association failed to do, while the commission for the use of personal names rejected the use of Ivan Mihailov, arguing that the name is a provocation towards the national feelings of the people in North Macedonia, because the historical figure in question was close to the fascist ideology and rejected with his actions the uniqueness of the Macedonian people, while also inciting intolerance and hatred for them.
The Chairman of the Ivan Mihaylov Culture Club in Bitola, Ljupco Georgievski, responded with a Facebook post, in which he says that representatives of Macedonian Bulgarians in North Macedonia will approach the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. A photo has been posted on the association’s website that reads “Banned but not defeated!”.
/PP/
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