The only Macedonian member in the Albanian national assembly Vasil Sterjovski appeared on Albanian national television where he provided documents proving the existence of a Macedonian minority in Albania from 1923 – Bulgaria claims the Macedonian minority in Albania was Bulgarian until 1945.
Sterjovski cited Italian, Bulgarian and French documents from 1923 that prove the Macedonian ethnicity of a large part of the population along the modern border with Macedonia. The documents show that many people have unambiguously stated a Macedonian ethnicity, even though at that period there wasn’t a Macedonian state.
Documents such as those provided by Sterjovski (link to video) counter the ridiculous claim by Bulgaria that a Macedonian identity has been “created” after World War 2 in the newly-formed Socialist Republic of Macedonia as part of the Yugoslav federation.
In recent years, Bulgarian interests have heightened their efforts to create evidence of a Bulgarian minority in Albania. Under pressure from Bulgaria the Edi Rama-led Government has included ‘Bulgarians’ as a new ethnicity as part of the ethnic demographic chart of the country, despite the absence of any Bulgarian cultural and ethnic associations existing there before 2019.
Bulgaria has also targeted the Gorani people in Kosovo, offering free schooling in Sofia and EU passports to the population in order to artificially create a ‘Bulgarian minority”.
