Two weeks after Aleksandar Neskoski’s brother, Martin, was killed in June 2011, someone threw Martin’s identity card at the door of his home and continued driving. Despite video footage that showed his brother being beaten by secret police, the official autopsy showed that Martin did not die because of violence. A message written in small stones appeared on Martin’s grave: “do not try to investigate, or there will be two more graves.”

For four years, Aleksandar has been looking for answers for the murder of his brother by Macedonian special police. On May 5, Macedonian opposition leaders released information that the highest levels of government- including the prime minister himself and the interior minister- knew about the death at the hands of special police and went to great lengths-including telling media outlets to portray him as a drug-user – to cover it up.

“They were laughing in the tapes,” says Aleksandar, now 29. “It wasn’t important to them that their citizen had died, they were more upset that the news coverage overshadowed the big arrest of some political enemy. They feel nothing towards their people.”

The revelation – contained in one of 670,000 wiretapped conversations from 20,000 phone numbers leaked by opposition leader Zoran Zaev since February, led to massive protests the same day that resulted in a number of injuries and some 40 arrests.

The tapes, which Zaev says were recorded by the government and leaked by a whistleblower, show top officials like Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, his cousin and intelligence chief Saso Mijalkov and former interior minister Gordana Jankulovska (the later two have redesign) conspiring about rigging votes, ensuring decisions of judges and prosecutors, controlling the media, punishing political opponents, covering up murders, and ordering a 600,000 euro Mercedes.

The government has not denied the authenticity of the recordings, but disputes the idea they were recorded from the inside, saying they were made by a foreign government who seeks to destabilize the country.

In the recording related to Martin Neskoski, Gruevski tells Jankuloska that the special police officer who killed him should be tried as a private citizen, not in his official capacity.

The release ignited spontaneous protests on May 5 and culminated in a massive opposition protest in this past Sunday, with tens of thousands of protesters present, and a campout in front of the government building of approximately 1,000 people since then. A counter-protest the next evening, drew tens of thousands of Gruevski supporters.

“Whenever things start going well for Macedonia, foreign forces try to mess it up, supported by domestic traitors,” said Tomislav Cubarevski, a middle aged man munching on popcorn at the rally. “It is a farce, it has all been planted – and we saw it already once in 2001.”

Gruevski maintains that he still holds more support, calling the current crisis a “dictatorship from the political minority” at the rally.

Despite mediation from members of the European Parliament, Gruevski looks unlikely to back down anytime soon.
“When you listen to the wiretaps, you know they are willing to do anything to stay in power,” said one Western diplomat familiar with the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

As the competing tent cities start growing, 40 kilometers away a corner of Kumanovo stands ravaged, largely reduced to rubble.

The weekend before the protests, Macedonia saw the worst violence it saw since 2001, when a conflict between ethnic Albanians and ethnic Macedonians threatened to destabilize the only Yugoslav republic that separated without a war.

In Kumanovo — called Kumanova in Albanian — 48 hours of violence culminated in the deaths of eight police officers and 10 so-called “terrorists” and the destruction of almost an entire neighborhood.

More than a week after special police swooped into the town at 5am on May 9 with helicopters and armored vehicles, residents of the area, known as “Divo Naselje” or “wild/unplanned neighborhood” in Macedonian and Lagja e Trimave, or “Alley of the Brave,” in Albanian, were still shaken on Tuesday as they treaded carefully over broken glass, crumbled roof tiles and the charred remains of their homes.

Agron Ajdini’s charred house is in shambles: the roof collapsed due to a bomb, a hole in his bedroom window, and destruction from a tank in the corner of the house. He holds up a pair of jeans that had been hanging in his closet where bullets ripped straight through. Two casings are still perched on the bed.

“My four-year-old son is so traumatized that he cannot sleep, nor can he stop talking to himself,” Ajdini said. “He has gotten so aggressive with us.”

Another resident, Qamil Azemi, who is blind, said he had not only been injured during the attack but dragged to the police station in Skopje in handcuffs, where for eight hours he was not given food, but was cursed at, made fun of, and told repeatedly to stand on one leg for hours on end.

“In every second I was thinking I was going to be killed,” Azemi said. “The police officer kept saying he would throw acid on my eyes and throw me into the Vardar River. They kept telling me to give them information, but I am blind, how could I have seen anything?”

Azemi’s 18-year-old nephew, Malush, was hit by a bullet in his shoulder while he and his relatives sought shelter on the ground floor of their house. Unlike many residents of the neighborhood, he does not want to rebuild the house and move on. He said he hasn’t been able to hear well or to sleep since the raid.

“How can I have a future in this country ever again? I am begging anyone to take me away from here,” Malush said.

Residents of the neighborhood, a small area whose houses are built densely together with compound-style dwelling for families, said they hadn’t seen or heard of any suspicious activity before the attack. Apparently the Macedonian government was tracking this group for more than two years, which leaves critics saying that the timing—just before the protests—and the location—in densely populated an urban area—of the attack are suspicious. Critics accuse the government of putting innocent lives at risk just to cause a distraction.

The clash followed a mysterious incident in Goshince, a remote village close to the porous Kosovo border. On April 21, Macedonian authorities said some 40 armed men had stormed a police station in the Lipkovo area, seizing weapons and ammunition. This incident, along with the clash in Kumanovo was blamed largely on militants from Kosovo linked to the National Liberation Army, who fought a brief insurgency with Macedonian forces in 2001.

That conflict ended with the Ohrid Peace Accord, which gave Albanians more rights. Leaders of the National Liberation Army disbanded and formed the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), which is in coalition with Gruevski’s VRMO-DPMNE. DUI Leader Ali Ahmeti was one of the commanders.

Despite the gains in Ohrid, Albanians have continued to languish economically and face discrimination. The wiretaps show the derision that the top leaders had for the community, which makes up 30 percent of Macedonia’s population of 2.1 million people.

“There’s no co-existing with them,” a voice thought to be Jankulovska says. “We need to deal with this once and for all.”

In the wake of Kumanovo, activists say, Albanians and Macedonians are closer together.

“Now there is fear, but it is fear shared amongst one another, not of one another,” said civil society activist Xhabir Deralla.

“The only thing this government has achieved is to unify the ethnic communities, though there are still quite a few challenges.”

“If Kumanovo had happened last year, there would be no love between the communities,” said Albert Musliu, founder of the Association for Democratic Initiatives, a civil society organization. “But now people are united against the government. This shows that joint living is possible.”

Whatever solidarity has been engendered, the group, the operation, and the “anti-terror” sweep remain shrouded in mystery, and the issue does not concern Macedonia alone. Families in Kosovo have been seeking information about the whereabouts of their loved ones- dead or alive, and sought permission to see those who are imprisoned – reportedly 21 of them.

“Everything is so confusing, we didn’t know that he was in Kumanovo and we still don’t know what happened,” Dibran Elshani, the brother of Bajram Elshani, who is currently being held in Skopje, said at a protest in Prishtina for the killed and arrested Kosovars.

“They’re calling him a terrorist. I know my brother, he isn’t a terrorist.”

Kumanovo is at Macedonia’s critical border with both Kosovo and Serbia, and years of frustration, apathy and disconnect could disintegrate quickly.

“I believe in a couple of weeks we will be sorted out,” says Musliu, of the civil society organization. “Otherwise we will enter a conflict phase.”

Macedonia became an EU candidate in 2005, but talks were never opened because of a long-standing dispute with Greece over the name. Observers say that from 2008, when Gruevski came to power, civil liberties, free media and rule of law have been slowly eroded in the pursuit of what one high-level Western diplomat dubbed, “the smart new authoritarianism.”

“Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is making us question our whole question of incremental change. Instead we have stability in exchange for authoritarian tendencies.”

SDSM deputy Radmila Sekerinska said Macedonia should be a warning to the region.

“My big message now is that Potemkin democracy ends up as Potemkin stability. In an ethnic mixed country, this is all the more problematic. The price is that the ethnic divides will take on regional character.”

Gruevski’s vision for Macedonia is perhaps best expressed with a facelift for Skopje dubbed “Skopje 2014:” a comprehensive and ubiquitous redesign of buildings in neoclassical style. He delivered his 55-minute speech to his supporters in front of a cement arc de triomphe that was erected a few years ago. His supporters–a much smaller group– are camping beneath gold-plated statues of heroes erected in classical era.

Back in the anti-government camp, protesters organized karaoke parties-singing songs in Macedonian, Albanian and Serbian. Martin Neskoski’s brother Aleksandar is there every night. He’s lost too much to stop fighting. he says. At the one year anniversary of his brother’s death, his father drank acid for ten hours and died in the hospital. His mother relies on copious medications.

“This government is inhumane and they have to go.”

For those protesting from home, the opposition has created a game. In “Super Zaev,” the SDSM leader, dressed in a cape, lobs bombs at former interior minister Jankulovska, Albanian leader Ali Ahmeti and finally, Gruevski himself. All of the others are eliminated- with some difficulty–but Gruevski, instead of being eliminated, turns into a ghoul–and is immune to the bombs.