Media activists in Macedonia accused the country’s government of crackdown on free speech after police raided the country’s biggest private television channel, ostensibly on financial grounds.

On November 25, a large contingent of riot police accompanied tax inspectors to the headquarter of A1 Channel in Skopje, insisting they were investigating tax fraud. A police spokesperson Ivo Kotevski said the investigation was not aimed at the channel alone, but also at other companies registered in the same building.

But journalists at the channel, which has been critical of the ruling nationalist party VMRO-DPMNE, complained they were prevented from doing their work as police officers barred the entry and subjected them to identity checks. A1’s editor-in-chief Mladen Cadikovski said officers sealed some of the channel’s equipment, restricting broadcast.