In North Macedonia, State Neglect Kills 59
On Sunday, 59 people died in a nightclub fire in Kočani, North Macedonia. Years of inaction on health and safety standards led to a tragedy of unimaginable proportions.
Protesters hold portraits of victims during a demonstration in the town of Kočani, North Macedonia, on March 17, 2025, following the fire at a nightclub that killed fifty-nine. (Robert Atanasovski / AFP via Getty Images)
“Years of silence lead to a minute of silence.” It was one of the most frequently shared phrases on social media, the day after fifty-nine people died in Kočani, a small town in the east of North Macedonia, in a fire at what looks like an improvised nightclub. Some 162 others were injured, with twenty-two of them in a critical condition.
As I write this — and struggle to fact-check an avalanche of unverified information — the first thing I wonder is how at a venue in which around five hundred people attended a party, the Interior Ministry did not conduct a risk assessment, when it is its obligation to do just that.
For this is a story of a tragedy. But it is also a story about the culture of turning a blind eye — and institutional negligence.
The Interior Ministry was required to secure the event from the outside, due to its size and the threat of possible incidents, having been previously informed of the risks. The interior minister himself confirmed this at a press conference, insisting that the police were present at the venue.
Furthermore, as part of the cooperation between the Interior Ministry and other institutions, it is required that first aid vehicles and a fire truck be provided in the immediate vicinity of events with high attendance and risk of possible escalation (large concerts, sports competitions, etc.).
According to Macedonian legislation, the Interior Ministry also must issue permits for the use of pyrotechnics, with conditions for their transportation, storage, and handling by a devoted individual. The presence of the police at the facility during the party was also confirmed by the Interior Ministry, who stated at a press conference on Monday morning that a police officer who was officially engaged at the event, (i.e., acting according to a previously prepared plan to monitor illicit drug trafficking and the possible presence of minors in the disco), lost his life in the blaze.
The presence of the police officer on duty at the improvised nightclub further emphasizes the fact that the police were informed about the scale of the event. So, even if they had been previously misled about the potential number of people present and the use of pyrotechnics, his presence at the scene of the event still did not result in alerting the institutions or extraordinary external security at the site. Nor was the alert raised over the presence of minors, who later became part of the victims and the injured.
In this context, it is a completely reasonable conclusion that if the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as the first institution that was supposed to assess risks and provide security, had fulfilled the required legal obligations, the tragedy could have been prevented — or, at least, its consequences drastically reduced.
Still, questions could also be raised in this regard. For there is also a local tradition of silent corruption of local police officers and inspectors, indeed a decades-old practice with regards to the functioning of catering facilities and clubs. We might ask: What if the police weren’t informed about the scope of the event and the plan to use pyrotechnics there? But some aspects were indeed predictable.
An ultrafamous band from the capital had come to this small town, and it could be assumed that this would spark massive interest among young people. Shouldn’t the police have checked the venue in advance and predicted that this event would need external security? In a country where every second private party uses pyrotechnics, there was a good chance that they’d be used here, too.
But, despite these failures by the Interior Ministry, the discussion of whether the venue had a license and whether it was granted on the basis of a detailed assessment of the location and its capacity, etc., and in general the long-standing tradition of corruption, has drawn the most public attention. As expected, according to the statement by the minister the next day in a press conference, the venue did not have a license.
The club operated with a forged license that it received due to what the interior minister called “bribery and corruption.”
Arrests
In the wake of the tragedy, some twenty people are under investigation, with fifteen arrested already. Some of the suspects themselves died in the blaze or are still in hospital. Some of the detainees are people who are directly guilty of this criminal event. That is, one person who is the organizer has been detained and we suspect that he is directly guilty.
A former state secretary of the Ministry of Economy, a head of a sector in this ministry, a former director of the Directorate for Protection and Rescue (DZS) as well as three employees of this same body have been detained, said the minister Panče Toškovski.
As I am writing this text, I am following the live broadcast of the press conference by the public prosecutor, Ljupčo Kočevski. His first statement: “the omissions are really very serious.”
The facility did not have a hydrant network or a hydrant nearby, there were only two fire extinguishers, there was only one improvised metal door, which was locked with a padlock and without a handle on the inside and covered with a sponge. There was no access for fire trucks from two sides. There was no fire-resistant material on the walls, no fire-resistant doors, nor a system with a strong sound signal for signaling guests.
Pyrotechnic materials were illegally used in the facility, without a company for igniting the pyrotechnic materials. The state inspectorate for urban planning was also present on site, after which it was concluded that the facility was registered as a business facility for light industry. The facility was not converted into a catering facility. Even though the facility has no conversion, it has an operating permit from the Ministry of Economy for a catering facility issued fifteen years ago.
This is coming out of the mouth of the public prosecutor in a democratic republic. I, as a journalist, am swinging somewhere between feelings of absolute rage and sadness, and a powerless and rather defeatist “here we go again” attitude.
All these “omissions” have existed in the background for fifteen years. But they led to a catastrophic outcome and an unimaginable tragedy due to the use of pyrotechnics, for which the police should grant permission and of which they should have advance warning.
Record of Impunity
Similar excuse-making logorrhea followed after a bus accident in 2019 in which sixteen people lost their lives when it was revealed that there was most likely a fake (or at least dubious) document for the technical inspection. It revealed that the law allows two different companies, but with the same owner, to own vehicles through one company while having their technical inspections carried out by another.
All this rhetoric about “how things should have been done earlier” — which we have been hearing for decades every time some unimaginable tragedy occurs — speaks to a culture and a mentality of low-level corruption that thrives on the assumption that “everyone lives like this,” “it’s always been this way,” etc. Probably hundreds of small nightclubs, located in underground spaces, are inadequately secured and lack a functioning evacuation system.
North Macedonia has a decades-long tradition of only reactive interventionism, with disproportionate severity. Through draconian punishments and delayed displays of strictness, the institutions, often the Ministry of Internal Affairs, try to whitewash their image.
Recently, in the center of the capital Skopje, a girl was killed on a pedestrian crossing by a drunk driver speeding at 130 km per hour in a place where the legal maximum is 50 km per hour. Reckless driving in the boulevards of the city center is a regular occurrence, which the police often do not treat seriously, with the excuse that they lack resources. In this case, there were mass protests and then increased controls by the police, as is only appropriate. Yet they also harshly penalized more minor offenses hardly likely to cause tragic consequences. The police’s now-excessive presence was an exception and seemed as if designed to make up for their previous inaction.
Such delayed reactions often indicate that the institutions have both the knowledge and trained personnel. What suffocates these institutions is the petty corruption, which is so widespread and difficult to trace that it has become a mentality and a way of life.