Nine people from the Skopje village of Batinci have been detained after throwing stones at each other. Two of them are minors, and a police vehicle was damaged in the incident. Once the case is fully documented, the Violent Crime Department at the Skopje police will file criminal charges for the offence of „violence”.

That is how the police bulletin describes the scene: neighbours throwing stones at one another in the middle of a village. But there is a second report from the same day, and it changes the whole picture.

What happened before the stones

At around 8pm, a 41-year-old identified as I.M. filed a report at the Skopje police. He stated that he had been physically attacked by five men in the yard of his house in Batinci. According to the report, one of them smashed the glass of the front door with a blunt object, while another used a sharp object to inflict cuts on him and on his underage son.

So this is not a spontaneous village quarrel. This is an attack on a family in their own yard, in which a child was injured too.

Who chose what

It matters to name this precisely, because the second description is easily lost beneath the first. „A fight between neighbours” is a phrasing in which everyone is equally guilty. „Five men entered someone else's yard and cut a father and his underage son with a sharp object” is something else.

The people who walked into that yard made a choice. No systemic failure forced them, no institution sent them. All those detained are from Batinci - so they know each other, live on the same street, and what happened is not a misunderstanding between strangers.

Where the state comes in

This is where the second question arrives, and it is already institutional. Nine people were detained, including two minors. The criminal complaint announced is for „violence”.

But I.M.'s report also describes bodily injuries inflicted with a sharp object on a minor, and damage to another person's property. Those are not the same charges. The Interior Ministry says measures are being taken to clarify the case - a formulation which means the story is not over.

The next figure worth waiting for is not how many people were detained. Detention lasts a day. What matters is which criminal complaint will be filed, against whom, and how long it will travel through the courts - because in a village where both the attacked and the attackers remain neighbours, that is the only thing that decides whether the case is closed or merely paused until next time.