What happened: On June 7, 2023, the media published about offensive graffiti with swastikas and the inscriptions “Gyupci” written with black spray on houses of the Roma population on Debarska Street in Bitola. This is another case of a hate crime, with a message calling for violence against the Roma ethnic community.
On June 15, the Helsinki Committee met with a resident of Debarska Street in Bitola, who gave us more information about the event itself, as well as the fact that this is not the first time that this kind of intimidation and endangering the safety of the Roma population has happened there. Police officers went to the place of the incident, but the residents have no information about their further action. Part of the graffiti was cleaned by the residents themselves, but after documenting the remaining graffiti, the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, together with the injured party, initiated criminal charges to the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Bitola for causing hatred, discord or intolerance against national, racial, religious and other discriminatory grounds from Article 319 and Endangering the safety from Article 144 paragraph 3 of the Criminal Code. Meanwhile, immediately before filing the criminal report, the victim was physically attacked in the same place where the graffiti were written, his assumption is that the attack was carried out by the same perpetrators. Therefore, the criminal report will be filed due to the committed criminal act from Article 319 paragraph 2 of the Criminal Code.
Brief description of the incident with bias indicators: In this incident, the bias motive is the ethnic origin, race and skin color, with the bias indicators being:
- Ethnicity – the graffiti were aimed at members of the Roma community
- Location – the graffiti were drawn in a neighborhood where Roma people live
- Model of previous incidents – previous events of intimidation and endangering the security of the Roma population in that neighborhood
Impact on the victims and the community: These types of incidents call into question the general safety in the country and the cohabitation among the different ethnic groups in society.
