November 2, 2018

Violence caused by support groups in Tetovo

Incident
Incident due to ethnical belonging, citizenship or language
Incident on a sport match

What happened: On 02.11.2018, around 21:30, in the vicinity of a restaurant on “Boris Kidrich” Street in
Tetovo, after finishing the celebration of the anniversary of the supporter group, a 15-year-old youth from
Tetovo, who was with a group of several friends, was physically assaulted by an unknown person who was with
a group of several other persons. The minor was hit on his back, whereby the perpetrators escaped. The shop
window of one of the nearby stores was damaged along with a passenger vehicle owned by A.M. (27) from
Tetovo. MoI Tetovo is taking measures to solve the case.
On 23.11.2018, the police pressed criminal charges against 14 persons, including a minor, for the violence
caused on 02.11 by the supporter groups of Vojvodi and Balisti.

Date, time and location of the incident: 02.11.2018, around 21:30 h, Tetovo
Source of information: Electronic media outlets: makfax.com.mk, fokus.com.mk and gol.mk
Victim(s) involved: 1 person.
Type of crime(s): Bodily injury (Article 131, CC), Violence (Article 386, CC)
Perpetrator(s): 7 identified perpetrators, one of whom is a minor.
Brief description of the event with bias indicators: In this incident, the bias motive is ethnicity, while the
bias indicators are
1. Ethnicity and belonging to a supporter group – the victim was of Macedonian ethnicity, and the attackers
were of the Albanian ethnic community and members of the supporter group “Balisti”.
2. Location – the incident took place in the center of Tetovo, after a sport match.

Status of the case: criminal charges were pressed against 7 perpetrators.
Response of the local authorities: By the time of writing of this report, MoI had not responded to
the Committee’s request for public information regarding this case, asking whether this incident contains
indicators which would verify a hate crime. The information about the criminal charges pressed was obtained
from the media.
Impact on the victims and the community: This incident calls into question the ethnic co-existence of
the two major ethnic communities in the country.

Address
“Boris Kidrich” Street
Location Name
Tetovo, North Macedonia

Number of victims
1
Number of Perpetrators
7
Status of the case
Perpetrators identified
Type of incident?
Physical attack (assault) Violence
Incident location
Street
How did the police react?
They caught the perpetrator
Have there been similar incidents / crimes in the same location?
Yes
Violence caused by support groups in Tetovo image

Criminal offences

Against Life and Body
Bodily Injury
Against the Public Order
Violence

Grounds

Nationality Ethnic origin