Macedonian Anti-Fascists Protest Harrasment

Anti-Fascist Protesters “Proud of the past that actually happened.”
Photo by V. Dzambaski (CC NC-SA)

Vanco Dzambaski published a photo-gallery from the gathering that took place February 16th in the center of Skopje, commemorating the February Campaign of 1944, when partisans from Macedonia, Greece and Kosovo marched through the snowy mountains to strike decisive blow to fascist forces in Macedonia and Northern Greece. World War II veterans and their supporters [mk] protested forced neglect of Allied achievements (including the founding of Macedonian state), and continuous harassment of the veteran organization by the current government at all levels.


In December 2012, the veteran organization [mk] was thrown out of their premises through a controversial court order, with help from out-of-town security agency [mk], after a local one failed [mk] to deal with the old fighters.

City government tried to stop the February protest [mk] by denying permission for use of the public square. They claimed other events were scheduled in the area at the designated time, but could not reveal what. The protesters decided to do it anyway, continuing the tradition of the original February march, commenced against the will of the then-authorities.

On the day of the protest, it was the only event there. Instead of covering the protest [mk] major pro-government media propagated Government's communique [mk] that they respect the heritage of the Second World War.

Why Nobody Uses the Expression "European Proverb"? But "African" is OK to Some.

Photo of three dark-skinned women holding hands and walking a dirt road in the tropics, with the words "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. - African proverb" from the Facebook page Being Liberal.

The above saying sounds nice, but "African proverb" sounds a bit broad. In Europe and Asia we use more precise designations based on language or ethnicity such as "Macedonian proverb" or "Chinese proverb" etc. I've never heard of anyone saying that a proverb is European or Asian. And Africa has much greater diversity of genes, peoples, cultures, and languages than both these continents. Hard to generalize, unless the proverb is generally used by all cultures across the whole continent.

Otherwise, this sounds like colonial mentality. Maybe this is a Fulani or Xhosa proverb, and by taking that part of its identity methinks we go into direction of reinforcing the opinions such as "all Africans are the same," and there's no need to concern ourselves with acknowledging their cultural diversity. 

If you know of a more precise source of this much-quoted inspirational saying, feel free to share it, so we can start correcting all instances of its appearance - together, cause it's a long road.