The protesters stormed parliament on Thursday night after the country’s opposition Social Democrat party and others representing Macedonia’s Albanian ethnic minority voted for a new speaker. Shouting and throwing chairs, the protesters attacked MPs, including the opposition leader, Zoran Zaev. Police later fired flash grenades in an attempt to disperse protesters outside the parliament and clear the way for the evacuation of politicians still in the building. Coalition talks broke down over ethnic Albanian demands that Albanian be recognised as an official second language in a country where a quarter of the population is ethnic Albanian. The European Union enlargement commissioner, Johannes Hahn, condemned the violence, saying in a tweet: “Violence has NO place in parliament.

Source: The Guardian April 27, 2017 21:02 UTC