A children's playground in the Skopje municipality of Kisela Voda has again become a target of vandalism - an unknown perpetrator doused the playground's equipment and benches on "Djordji Sugare" street with motor oil, in a place where the youngest play every day.

Residents are outraged and are asking the authorities to do something to return the equipment to its original state. This isn't the first such case - children's playgrounds across Skopje have lately become targets of senseless destruction once again. The question that arises of its own accord is simple and difficult at the same time: who is bothered by the place where children grow up?

Vandalising a playground isn't ordinary damage to property. It's an attack on one of the few shared spaces where children from the neighbourhood socialise, grow up and play for free, without a screen in front of them. When someone deliberately destroys it, they don't just damage plastic and wood - they steal a piece of childhood of an entire neighbourhood. Whether the authorities will find the perpetrator and, more importantly, whether they'll restore something more than the equipment - at least the sense that places like this are valuable and protected - that will show how seriously the problem is taken.