In a shop in Idrizovo, at 22:30 on 22 August, two men began behaving aggressively towards the woman working there. A man from the same village told them to stop. The answer was a beating, and according to the report - with a blunt object.

Officers from the Skopje Interior Ministry unit detained I.H., 25, and A.H., 20, both from Idrizovo. The man who was attacked, I.O., is 41. Once the case is fully documented the appropriate charges will follow, police said.

Two young men decided that a woman working behind a counter was theirs to treat however they liked, and that anyone who got in the way should pay for it. Nobody pushed them into that decision. They made it themselves, at night, in front of witnesses.

The price of not looking away

The most important detail in this story is not how old the detained men are. It is that I.O. stepped in. In a country where the standard advice is "don't get involved, you don't need the headache", a forty-one-year-old man put himself between a shop assistant and two aggressive customers - and ended up beaten.

What happens next will show what that act was actually worth. An arrest is fast and visible. What comes after - the charges, the indictment, the hearings, the verdict - is slow and invisible, and that is exactly where stories like this usually disappear quietly.

If the man who stood up for an employee ends up with serious injuries while the attackers get a suspended sentence, next time nobody will step in. And that will not be the citizens' fault.