During our weeklong trip throughout the Balkans, our group met with Prof. Dr. Vesel Memedi, the leader of the RDK political party in Macedonia. Part of what he discussed was the revolution that has taken place in Macedonia for about two months now, and all began with a wire tapping scandal. According to Prof. Dr. Vesel Memedi, the scandal was that the government wiretapped 26,000 cities and Macedonians started to make it public what the government had done. There was a lot of corruption on an enormous scale in Macedonia, not only with the wire tapping scandal but also with multiple killings that were kept hidden in the last ten years. The government in no way wanted to resign, so they insisted that they needed new elections. In the 25 years of Independence in Macedonia, they have never had fair and democratic elections.
I found this kind of revolution to very interesting, mostly because I’ve not once seen a colorful revolution such as this. When I first was walking around Skopje, I thought it was possible just graffiti all over the statues, fountains, and buildings. But as one of our tour guides later explained, I realized it was for a very different reason.
This revolution is known as “The Colorful Revolution” because so far it has consisted of protestors throwing paint on statues and government buildings all around Skopje, Macedonia. I find this topic very interesting and have decided to explore this topic more for my final project in this Documentary class. So far this revolution has not been violent and the police have not been very aggressive towards the protestors either, but Prof. Dr. Vesel Memedi said that this colorful revolution will not continue infinite, and that soon it could take a turn to a more violent side, and if it does that he hopes it will be a controlled violence. “I think two months has been enough for the revolution to take place” and I think “there will be another color and that color will be blood.” You cannot fight a revolution with colors, and I am excited to have the opportunity to learn more about this unique revolution with my work.
