The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia sacks chief editor of controversial encyclopedia

SKOPJE, Oct. 12 – The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’s leading academic body last week dismissed the chief editor of a controversial state-funded encyclopedia that has drawn harsh criticism from the Albanian community in the western Balkans.
The [FYROM] Academy of Science and Arts decided to fire Blaze Ristovski and the editing team that worked on the project.
The encyclopedia, published by MANU in September, offended the country’s ethnic Albanians by using derogatory terms and calling them “settlers” in FYROM from the 16th century.
Ristovski told local media he had no intention of resigning because he felt no responsibility for doing anything wrong.
Ethnic Albanians account for 25 percent of FYROM’s population of 2.1 million people. Several protests were staged to express anger with claims made in the book.
Officials from neighboring Albania and Kosovo also harshly criticized the publication as very offensive to them.