Vucic: With the president of North Macedonia, we will celebrate Ilinden together

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced that together with the President of the Republic of Macedonia, Gordana Siljanovska Davkova, he will celebrate Ilinden (the National holiday of Macedonia - ed.note) BGNES reported.

The two will visit the "St. Prokhor Pchinski" monastery in Serbia at the beginning of August.

"I had a heart-to-heart conversation with President Davkova about the most important bilateral issues, and in particular about our economic relations, including the place of Serbia and North Macedonia in the EU enlargement agenda, and joint support on the way to the European Union," he wrote Vucic in his own profile. "We both agreed to visit the monastery of St. "Prokhor Pczynski" in Ilinden. This will be an excellent opportunity to further strengthen relations between the two peoples, Vucic said.

The monastery "St. Prohor Pcniski" is located on the territory of Serbia, near the village of Starac, 3 km from the border with North Macedonia. The pro-Serbian forces and envoys of the former Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito gathered in the monastery on August 2, 1944 (then Ilinden was celebrated in a new style, note ed.). At this assembly, known as ASNOM, a decision was made to "create a Macedonian language, alphabet, nation".

BGNES reminds that the communist government in Skopje handed over the monastery and all the border villages to Serbia. The decision was taken personally by the person considered to be the father of Serbian propaganda in Macedonia after 1945 - the then leader of the Macedonian Communist Party Lazar Kolishevski /born Lazar Kulishev, note ed./

On July 29, 1955, the Vatican International Catholic Telegraph Agency /VMKTA/ defined the temple as an "old Bulgarian monastery". The Agency condemns the persecution and expulsion of the monks by the Yugoslav regime, as well as of all Macedonian Bulgarians. VMKTA recalls that a decree was created "Macedonian nation and Macedonian language" and condemns "the brutal destruction of the Bulgarian historical heritage and everything related to the Bulgarian past by the leaders of the Serbian hegemony in Belgrade and Skopje". Almost all participants in ASNOM were killed and sentenced to heavy sentences. Among them is the first president of the Republic of Macedonia, Metodi Andonov - Cento. | BGNES