What happened: Three unknown perpetrators assaulted three young men from the village of
Arachinovo and one from Skopje, infl icting knife wounds. All four of them were taken to the hospital,
where one victim was diagnosed with heavy bodily harm, and the other three with minor injuries.
Date, time and location of the incident: January 26th, 18:30 hrs, Mavrovka Trade Centre, Skopje.
Source of information: The electronic media Plusinfo.
Victim(s) involved: Two 18 y/o and one 23 y/o males from Arachinovo, and one 21 y/o male from
Skopje.
Type of the crime(s): Violence (Art.386 CCRM), Endangerment with dangerous mean during fi ght or
argument (Art.133 CCRM), Bodily harm (Art.130 CCRM), Heavily bodily harm (Art.131 CCRM).
Perpetrator(s): Unknown group of three perpetrators.
Brief description of incident with bias indicators: In this incident, the bias motive is the ethnic origin,
citizenship or language, and the bias indicators are:
1. Pattern of previous incidents – the incident occurred in an area where multiple hate crime incidents
of violent assaults occurred in 2013 and 2014;
2. Nature of violence – the incident was carried out in public;
3. Lack of other motives.
Status of the case: Criminal charges submitted.
Response of local authorities: Answering upon a Request for information of public character, the
Ministry of Interior Affairs (MOI) answered that the case has been registered as Violence (Art,386 CCRM). However, when the case was clarifi ed, MOI submitted eight criminal complaints for the
criminal act of Participation in a fi ght (Art. 132 CCRM). This means that criminal complaints were
fi led against the victims as well.
Impact on the victim(s) and the community: This incident puts into question the ethnic coexistence
between the two major communities in the country.
