"Concrete - death for tourism": citizens on paddleboards redirected the speedboats on Lake Ohrid

When institutions stay quiet long enough, citizens start improvising. In Lagadin it looked like this: people on paddleboards went out into Lake Ohrid and physically pushed boats, speedboats and jet skis back to the distance the law already requires.

The action was organised by the association "Star Lagadin", backed by the "Green People's Guard". The reason they gave is simple and familiar: not enough response from the responsible institutions. The protest then continued on land, with banners in English - "UNESCO, we have a problem" - and in Macedonian: "Concrete - death for tourism" and "Urbanisation without sewage".

Article 13, which exists with or without them

One of the banners carried a specific legal provision - the Law on Inland Navigation, Article 13. Vessels are obliged to keep an appropriate distance from marked bathing areas and beaches. That is not a demand, it is a binding obligation. The organisers asked a question they answered themselves simply by standing in the water: "Does there have to be a tragedy before institutions apply the law? On the lake? On the road?"

So we have a law in force, an authority that is supposed to enforce it, and citizens enforcing it with their own bodies instead. The question is not whether the protest is unusual. The question is which authority failed to do its job for things to get this far.

The hotel right on the shore

The second set of demands concerns the disputed hotel being built directly on the shoreline. With messages such as "Anti-corruption investigation for the Lagadin hotel!" and "Hotel Lagadin - urban crime", citizens asked the State Commission for Prevention of Corruption and the Prosecutor's Office to examine the entire permit process.

The association's demands are a long list, but all of the same kind: enforce the existing inland navigation law with penalties for violators, mark the navigation lanes clearly, install pedestrian crossings and speed signs through the populated coastal stretches, urgently adopt a spatial plan for the shoreline, and remove every illegal structure in the UNESCO-protected zone.

Not one of those demands is revolutionary. Each describes work somebody is already being paid to do. That is the whole point.

Lake Ohrid is under UNESCO protection, and that status is precisely why the recommendations get postponed for years instead of implemented. The association warns that delaying protection measures is making the situation worse. The question left hanging is whether we need to lose the status before anyone understands what it meant.