The institutions in Skopje have not presented real arguments for disputing the registration of Bulgarian associations, Bulgarian Deputy Foreign Minister Kostadin Kodzhabashev told a news conference here on Thursday. “We are deeply alarmed by North Macedonia’s consistent actions to limit the rights to association and free expression of the Bulgarian community in the country,” he said.
The Ivan Mihaylov Cultural Centre Association in Bitola has been de-registered by the Central Registry of the Republic of North Macedonia, shows a check by BTA on the Registry’s website. The de-registration comes 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 commission for the use of personal names rejected the use of Ivan Mihaylov, arguing that the name is a provocation towards the national feelings of the people in North Macedonia. The associations had a three-month deadline to change their names, which is something the Ivan Mihaylov Association failed to do.
/NZ/
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