Several leading human rights NGOs from Macedonia issued a reaction to the Parliament and the Government of Republic of Macedonia on 24 June 2008, regarding the recent changes in the Law on Criminal Procedure and the Law on Interception of Communications, allowing special investigative measures (such as surveillance).
The Foundation Open Society Institute - Macedonia, the Association for Criminal Justice and Criminology of Macedonia and the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights of the Republic of Macedonia expressed deep concern because of the fast-track adoption of changes in the legislation "without no expert discussion whatsoever." These changes can turn Macedonia from a state based on a rule of law into a "police state unconcerned with respect of basic human rights and freedoms."
As a result of expert analysis of the new legislation, the signatories stated: "Besides enlarging the possibility for implementation of special investigative procedures for crimes outside of the sphere of organized crime, these changes also allow wide preventive implementation of these measures, even in cases without reasonable doubt of hard crimes and corruption. These changes are not in line with the European and world human rights standards, nor are common as acceptable method for fighting crime and corruption."
A similar manner of adopting the new version of the Law on Interception of Communications is also expected these days. The current draft also raises serious concerns regarding abuse of privacy.
NGO representatives require that the adoption of this type of legislation should be accompanied by "widespread expert and scientific public discussion involving the institutions of the judiciary and the civil society, through a democratic process aiming to achieve reasonable balance between the efficiency in fighting crime and corruption, and the basic human rights of privacy."
The EDRi-member Metamorphosis Foundation also voices concern from the perspective of the development of the information society, especially because the changes in the legislation do not define the mechanisms to control and prevent arbitrary abuse of the new powers, and because the minimum standards for public consultation including all stakeholders have not been met during the drafting and adoption. New technologies enable easy ways that directly influence the lives of the growing number of Internet users in Macedonia, which can involve privacy abuse; therefore carrying out the legislative process in an inclusive and transparent manner is of special significance.
Popular Macedonian bloggers also voiced concern due to an unexplained drastic increase of the state security budget (from about 0.4 million euro to over 24 millione euro) and the changes in the Law on Criminal Procedure which provide extremely wide powers to implement surveillance. The links to such posts received high number of votes on the social bookmarking service Kajmak.ot.
The influential blog Vuna reacted: "they raised the secret police budget 60 times. Nobody offered an explanation. I wonder if they work 60 times more secretive, or will they survey 60 times more people. This is an introduction to a dystopian scenario."
The blogger Volan synthesised the information from the traditional media on the changes of the Law on Criminal Procedure via links and quotes in the post "'The Big Ears' - legalized. The Big Brother watches, listens and records - legally this time. "providing space for discussion used by tens of readers who posted various comments".
(Contribution by Filip Stojanovski, EDRI-member Metamorphosis - Macedonia)