Elena Gagovska is a Macedonian activist, writer, and student based in Berlin.
North Macedonia’s Levica party looked like a new hope for the Left in the former Yugoslav state. But a controversial takeover of the party has split its original leadership group — and taken it toward hateful chauvinism against the country’s Albanian minority.
The fire at Greece’s notorious Moria refugee camp left over 12,000 people without shelter, but the new camp built to replace it holds only 3,000. The deliberate overcrowding flies in the face of anti-COVID measures, but it also has a clear political message: asylum seekers’ lives are more dispensable than European citizens’.
Macedonia’s premier said he hoped that EU and NATO membership would “whip” his country “into shape.” But last week’s failed referendum has instead pitched the small Balkan state into crisis.