List of massacres in North Macedonia

Last updated

The following is a list of massacres that have occurred in North Macedonia and its predecessors:

Contents

Ottoman period

NameDateLocationDeathsPerpetratorVictimsNotes
Massacre of the Albanian Beys 9 August 1830 Bitola, Ottoman Empire 1,000Ottoman forces Albanian beys Albanian beys massacred by Ottoman forces.
Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising August 1903Ottoman Empire (Throughout modern-day North Macedonia)4,694Ottoman forces Macedonian Bulgarians and Aromanians Macedonian Bulgarians and Aromanian civilians massacred by Ottoman forces. [1] [2] [3]
Takeover of Skopje1912 Kumanovo and Skopje 3,000Serbian forcesAlbanians [4]
Slaughter in Bitola1913Hospitals in Bitola Serbian forces Turkish patientsWhen Serbian forces entered Bitola, they killed Turkish patients to make room for injured Serbs. [4]
Massacre at Ohrid1913 Ohrid 650Serbian forcesBulgarians, Turks, and AlbaniansSerbian forces killed 150 Bulgarians and 500 Albanians and Turks. [5]
Kokošinje murders1904Kokošinje53Bulgarian forcesSerbsBulgarian forces killed 53 Serbs [6] [7] [8]

World War I

NameDateLocationDeathsPerpetratorVictimsNotes
Bitola massacre 1915Kičevo and Kruševo 555Bulgarian forcesAlbaniansBulgarian forces killed hundreds of Albanian civilians and burned hundreds of homes. [9] [ better source needed ]
Štip massacre 1915Ljuboten, Štip region118-120 VMRO Serbian soldiers [10] [11]

World War II

NameDateLocationDeathsPerpetratorVictimsNotes
Radolishta massacre 28 October 1944Struga Municipality, Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia)84 Wehrmacht AlbaniansMassacre of Albanians by the armed forces of Nazi Germany. [12]
Bloody Christmas (1945) January 1945Throughout the Socialist Republic of Macedonia 1,200Yugoslav forcesBulgarians Macedonian Bulgarian children, women, and men found in mass graves. [13]

Modern period

NameDateLocationDeathsPerpetratorVictimsNotes
Vejce ambush 28 April 2001Tetovo region, on the Šar Mountains, Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia)8 NLA Macedonian soldiers Macedonian soldiers massacred by Albanian insurgents.
Karpalak massacre 8 August 2001Motorway Skopje - Tetovo, near the village of Grupčin, Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia)10NLAMacedonian soldiers Macedonian army reservists killed by Albanian insurgents. [14]
Ljubotenski Bačila massacre 10 August 2001Locality Ljubotenski Bačila on the Skopska Crna Gora mountains, between the villages of Ljuboten (Skopje) and Ljubanci, Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia)8NLAMacedonian soldiersMacedonian army reservists killed by Albanian insurgents. [15]
Ljubotenski Bačila massacre 12 August 2001Locality Ljubotenski Bačila on the Skopska Crna Gora mountains, between the villages of Ljuboten (Skopje) and Ljubanci, Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia)10Macedonian armyAlbanian civiliansMassacre of Albanian civilians two days after an ambush of Macedonian soldiers by the NLA
Smilkovci lake killings 12 April 2012 Butel Municipality, Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia)5AlbaniansMacedonian civiliansFive Macedonian men aged between 18 and 21 years old found killed near Skopje. Subsequent investigations found that they were killed by Albanians. [16]

See also

  1. Brown, Keith (12 April 2013). Loyal Unto Death: Trust and Terror in Revolutionary Macedonia. ISBN   978-0253008473.
  2. "However, contrary to the impression of researchers who believe that the Internal organization espoused a "Macedonian national consciousness," the local revolutionaries declared their conviction that the "majority" of the Christian population of Macedonia is "Bulgarian." They clearly rejected possible allegations of what they call "national separatism" vis-a-vis the Bulgarians, and even consider it "immoral." Though they declared an equal attitude towards all the "Macedonian populations." Tschavdar Marinov, We the Macedonians, The Paths of Macedonian Supra-Nationalism (1878–1912), in "We, the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe" with Mishkova Diana as ed., Central European University Press, 2009, ISBN   9639776289, pp. 107-137.
  3. Autonomy for Macedonia and the vilayet of Adrianople (southern Thrace) became the key demand for a generation of Slavic activists. In October 1893, a group of them founded the Bulgarian Macedono-Adrianopolitan Revolutionary Committee in Salonica...It engaged in creating a network of secretive committees and armed guerrillas in the two regions as well as in Bulgaria, where an ever-growing and politically influential Macedonian and Thracian diaspora resided. Heavily influenced by the ideas of early socialism and anarchism, the IMARO activists saw the future autonomous Macedonia as a multinational polity, and did not pursue the self-determination of Macedonian Slavs as a separate ethnicity. Therefore, Macedonian (and also Adrianopolitan) was an umbrella term covering Bulgarians, Turks, Greeks, Vlachs (Aromanians), Albanians, Serbs, Jews, and so on. While this message was taken aboard by many Vlachs as well as some Patriarchist Slavs, it failed to impress other groups for whom the IMARO remained the Bulgarian Committee.' Historical Dictionary of Republic of Macedonia, Historical Dictionaries of Europe, Dimitar Bechev, Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN   0810862956, Introduction.
  4. 1 2 Leo Freundlich: Albania's Golgotha Archived 31 May 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  5. Kramer, Alan. Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War. p. 138.
  6. Јанићије Поповић, Пламен, Приштина 1930, 25.
  7. С. Симић, Српска револуционарна организација, комитско четовање у Старој Србији и Македонији 1903-1912, Београд 1998, 123-129.
  8. Николов, Борис Й. Вътрешна македоно-одринска революционна организация. Войводи и ръководители (1893—1934). Биографично-библиографски справочник, София, 2001, pp. 158-159.
  9. Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922. March 1, 1996. p.183
  10. Report of the International Commission (1919). Album des crimes bulgares : annexes aux documents relatifs aux violations des conventions de la Haye et du droit international en général, commises de 1915-1918 par les bulgares en Serbie occupée. Paris: Yugoslavia.
  11. Willmott, H. P. (2003). World War I. New York: Dorling Kindersley.
  12. Zekoli, Arsim (3 December 2020). "Три масакри и злосторството кое трае – DW – 3.12.2020". Deutsche Welle (in Macedonian). Retrieved 24 February 2024.
  13. Bechev, Dimitar (2009) Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia. Scarecrow Press. p.287. ISBN   0810855658
  14. "Ten Macedonian troops die in ambush". TheGuardian.com . 9 August 2001.
  15. "Eight ARM reservists killed near Ljubotenski Bacila in 2001 remembered".
  16. "Adnkronos". www1.adnkronos.com. Retrieved 2020-12-15.


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