Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski urged citizens not to succumb to provocations and to remain calm and collected, after the nationalist Albanian celebrations of their Independence Day earlier this week.

The police reacted very soberly, without escalating the situation, and suspects are already detained. I warn that the article against violation of symbols does not apply only to the state flag but to flags of other countries. And therefore, I call for calm, and for people not to succumb to provocations, Mickoski said during a visit to the largely Macedonian area of Jegunovce, in the largely Albanian north-west of Macedonia.

After the arrest of half a dozen ethnic Albanians, some of whom were charged with destruction of Macedonian flags in Skopje, several ethnic Macedonians were also arrested after they did a tit-for-tat burning of an Albanian flag in Prilep.
The Prime Minister today again blamed the opposition DUI party of stoking the flames of ethnic division.

There is an isolated group that is having a very difficult time to get used to being in the opposition after two decades in power. They are concerned by the fact that, while justice may be slow, it is gaining on them. They are afraid because they know what they were doing in the past two decades. And so, the only tool that remains at their disposal is to sow division and to try to stoke inter-ethnic tensions. We will not allow them to do so, Mickoski said.