Macedonia full of firearms, NGO says

[poiuytrewq0987]

The NGO Civil, which is on the helm of a nationwide campaign for the control of privately-held weapons, says the country urgently needs another disarmament campaign, because previous attempts coordinated by the police have largely backfired.

Civil estimates that some 110,000 to 170,000 people in the country hold about 500,000 illegal weapons.

The NGO has calculated that between 2004 and 2010, the authorities managed to collect and destroy some 23,000 firearms, which they say is not enough.

“We appeal for harsher penalties [for holding illegal weapons]… as well as for actions to strengthen trust in the institutions and public awareness”, Xhabir Derala, the head of Civil, said in Skopje.

Macedonia carried out its first disarmament drive in the aftermath of the 2001 armed conflict between Albanian insurgents and the security forces.

The operation was carried out by NATO forces and was designed to ensure that the insurgents handed over their weapons before being pardoned and reintegrated into society. In only 45 days, NATO collected some 7,500 items of weaponry.

Although the operation was seen as successful, experts warned that huge arsenals still remained unregistered across Macedonia.

In 2010 amendments to the law gave gun-owners a year to hand over illegal weapons or ask for their legalization.

After this deadline expired in mid-2011, the police admitted that the campaign was unsuccessful and that the number of collected items did not surpass 100.

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/macedonians-armed-to-the-teeth

[Vojnik]

I wonder what sought of people hold illegal firearms. Could it be pointed at a certain ethnic group?

[iNird]

I wonder what sought of people hold illegal firearms. Could it be pointed at a certain ethnic group?

Maybe. One of the comments in the article was the following:


Im from Macedonia and live 5 km from the border with Kosovo, one day in 2002 a armoured viechel from the Macedonian army stopt at the gates infront of our house and checked our ID and me and my father got AK-47 brand new. They came back 7 years later and took the wepons and we got again a brand new AK-47 + ammo. There are 8800 citizens in our municipalaty and around 4000 something males all of them have AK-47. There has been no incident for 10 years. Its not how many you have but how and when you use tiem. When I read a Comment like "Well what do you expect in the Balkans", its just what I would expect from you. Using my calculations there are more than 1.5 million wepons in Macedonia. For exapmle in the US there are 12,632 homocide deats in 2011. That for me is a ethnic clensing.

I heard this was quite common in 2001 in my area, many of the Slavo-Macedonians were given ak47's by the government. Point being, all sides feel that owning a fireman will ensure their safety......