Macedonia Govt 'Put NGOs Under Surveillance'

Top activists from leading NGOs like the Macedonian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Transparency - Macedonia, the Open Society Foundation - Macedonia, CIVIL - Centre for Freedom and the Metamorphosis foundation have been tapped for years, the opposition Social Democrats' leader Zoran Zaev alleged at a press conference on Monday.

"It is clear that these are the most active NGOs [who are] critical observers of social processes and who are fighting to improve various kinds of human rights guaranteed by the constitution," Zaev said.

NGO representatives were handed folders with what the opposition said were conversations they had taken part in which had been wiretapped. Zaev said that the Social Democrats will not make these public in order to protect the privacy of the victims.

The opposition claims that Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who has been in power since 2006, has orchestrated the surveillance of over 20,000 people, including his own ministers.

Since February, it has been releasing batches of wiretapped conversations allegedly incriminating senior officials, and has been urging Gruevski to resign.

Zaev, who held his press conference at an opposition tent camp in front of the government building, said that more NGOs were under surveillance and that the opposition will hand all the material it has to the people who have been targeted.

"The tapes published so far show that Gruevski and recently-resigned secret police chief [Saso] Mijalkov have been eavesdropping on their own ministers as well, but the main target was the critically-oriented public in Macedonia," Zaev said.

Ahead of a fresh round of talks with the government aimed at calming the crisis in the country, mediated by the EU in Brussels, Zaev reiterated...