Macedonians seek justice to heal Kočani’s wounds
Every Saturday in Kočani, North Macedonia, looks the same since last year’s tragedy. Parents gather for a weekly march across the small town. It usually starts at the city park, continues to the police headquarters and ends in front of the local court – a reminder for the institutions to do their job. The marches continue, driven not by the promise of answers, but by the fear that those answers may never arrive.
February 23, 2026 -
Jovan Gjorgovski
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Articles and CommentaryIssue 1-2 2026Magazine
Photo courtesy of Jovan Gjorgovski
Sixty-three. A number that once meant nothing special to ordinary Macedonians now carries the weight of a national wound. Sixty-three lives lost, destroyed or forever altered by a single night in Kočani. Sixty-three families left with questions that refuse to fade away. Sixty-three reasons why an entire country is watching one courtroom with clenched fists and held breath.
Nine months after the tragedy which tore through Kočani, sending shockwaves across the country, the Macedonian society finds itself confronting not only a tragedy, but itself. Inside a specially built courtroom in Idrizovo, within the country’s largest and most heavily guarded prison, a trial is unfolding that has gripped the nation like no other in a generation. The choice of the location is telling, as this is not just an ordinary legal case, but one deemed so significant – so sensitive – and possibly volatile that it required extraordinary measures. This is not simply a trial to determine who failed to act or whose negligence cost irreplaceable lives, it is a trial for the future of the whole society, a trial about the state itself.
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Justice, Kocani, North Macedonia, Western Balkans
