Macedonian Human Rights Movement International - Press
Release
Bulgaria has stepped up its campaign of blatant racism and
intimidation against its large Macedonian minority only months
before its acceptance into the European Union. Following a
defamation campaign against Macedonian political party OMO
Ilinden PIRIN by Bulgarian media, Bulgarian politicians have
threatened legal action against the Macedonian party and have
called on all Macedonians to be "expelled" from Bulgaria or
"shot dead when walking the streets".
Bulgarian secret police are detaining Macedonians and
threatening them unless they denounce their involvement in the
Macedonian human rights movement. Specifically, Bulgarian
authorities are demanding that Macedonians sign declarations
that they are not and they will not be members of OMO Ilinden
PIRIN. For more details please see the letter below from OMO
Ilinden PIRIN sent to the Committee of the Ministers of
Europe.
MHRMI calls on the international community to condemn Bulgaria's
state-sponsored acts of oppression, and demand that Bulgaria
immediately recognize its large Macedonian minority and grant it
the human rights that it is guaranteed by all international
human rights conventions. Moreover, MHRMI calls on the European
Union to enforce the European Court of Human Rights October 20,
2005 decision in favour of OMO Ilinden PIRIN's immediate
registration and to make Bulgaria's accession to the EU
explicitly conditional on its recognition of its Macedonian
minority.
Bill Nicholov, President
Macedonian Human Rights Movement International
Address: 157 Adelaide St. West, Suite 434, Toronto,
Canada M5H 4E7
Tel: 416-850-7125 Fax: 416-850-7127
E-mail:
info@mhrmi.org
Website:
www.mhrmi.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OMO Ilinden PIRIN
DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT OF HUMAN AND MINORITY RIGHTS IN BULGARIA
-
PARTY FOR INTEGRATION, DEVELOPMENT, AND ECONOMIC
ADVANCEMENT
ZK Elenovo, bl. 6 B app. 6, p.k. Mechkarovi, Post Cod 2700,
Blagoevgrad, BULGARIA
www.omoilindenpirin.org
info@omoilindenpirin.org
To the Committee of the Ministers of Europe
Your Excellencies,
OMO Ilinden PIRIN was established as a party on February 28,
1998, was registered on February 13, 1999 and was banned on
February 19, 2000 by the Constitutional Court of the Republic of
Bulgaria. On October 20, 2005 the party won its trial against
the ban in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Since May 14, 2006 OMO Ilinden PIRIN has been an observer member
of the European Free Alliance.
The main problems of the party come solely from the fact that it
is the only one in the Republic of Bulgaria that recognizes the
existence of a Macedonian minority and struggles for the rights
of the Macedonians. Thus it is frequently described as an
�anti-national� and �anti-government� party. The denials of the
existence of the Macedonian minority and the violation of the
rights of the Macedonians in Bulgaria have been an official
policy in the Republic of Bulgaria for the last 50 years. The
discrimination against OMO Ilinden PIRIN is a part of the policy
of discrimination of the ethnic minorities in the country.
In February 2006 we turned to the Committee of the Ministers of
Europe with an application for intervention in gaining back our
registration since there is no procedure in Bulgaria for
reversing the decision of the Constitutional Court.
In the absence of a procedure in Bulgaria for regaining the
unlawfully taken registration of OMO Ilinden - PIRIN, the party
started a new procedure for registering itself in the face of a
new discriminatory law for political parties that required the
gathering of 5,000 signatures in order to be established as a
political party. On June 25, 2006 the party opened its
foundational meeting under media pressure, disinformation and
threats produced by other political parties and even by some
MPs. The arguments given against the registration of the new
party were accompanied with a vast disinformation campaign that
the party was founded on an ethnic basis (something that is
against the Bulgarian Constitution), that it is anti-Bulgarian,
separatist and that at the foundational meeting there were less
than the needed 500 founders. Alongside the media, agents from
the political police of the Blagoevgrad (Pirin) region took part
in this smear campaign, whose control over some of the
journalists was evident. The peak of this escalated situation
happened when MPs openly called for members of our party to be
put in jail without trial (Boris Yachev and Krasimir
Karakachanov) and various mayors started stating that all the
Macedonians should be expelled from Bulgaria (one of them was
Blagoevgrad's mayor Lazar Prichkapov); the municipal councilor
in Varna, Veselin Danov stating that Macedonians must be shot
dead if they go out on the streets etc. None of the above
provoked any sign of condemnation in Bulgarian society at
large.
Party members were also targeted with other disinformation and
propaganda to the effect that pensioners would stop receiving
their pensions if becoming members of the party. When the party
eventually succeeded in gathering the needed 5,000 members
another controlled campaign came into force in the media,
claiming that the party got its members by paying them for each
signature. Then followed another series of threats by
politicians in the press, provocations that the prosecution
should deal with the activists of the party and similar
statements. The MP and a candidate for president of Bulgaria,
Volen Siderov, said that if he had power, he would take
citizenship of members of the party and the head of the
Organization of the Blagoevgrad Municipalities, Valentin
Chilikov, and a mayor of the village of Strumiani and a head of
the Organization of the Municipalities of Bulgaria said that,
without any doubt, as compared to the Bulgarians the Macedonians
in Bulgaria were not loyal citizens of the country.
We suspect that the telephones of the leaders of the party are
regularly under surveillance by the political police in the
area. On September 9, 2006, without giving ay reason, one of the
leaders of PIRIN - Botyo Vangelov - was detained by civil
policemen, who did not identify themselves, and also confiscated
from him a list with the names and personal details of 499
members of the party. He was kept in the local police station
for 6 hours and was repeatedly insulted with ethnic slurs. The
list was returned after 5 days. A short while later, the local
directorate of the police gave to the media a made-up story,
using the facts in the way they liked, claiming that there was
an attempt of breaking-in by force into a state building, an
attempt to break into a secret database and so on.
In the evening of September 10, 2006 , allegedly informed that
there had been a �trade in signatures,� the police came into the
party's meeting place in Blagoevgrad, where its members were
preparing the documents for the court and sought to confiscate
the party members list as �material evidence�. Fortunately, this
did not happen because the people there resisted this unlawful
action. The campaign in the press did not stop for 9 days and
mysteriously stopped on the day when the documents for
registration were taken to the court, despite that the party
kept that secret from the media.
On December, 25 2005 the Party completed an application for a
meeting with the Procurator General of Bulgaria in connection
with the violation of the human rights of the Party's members.
We still have no reply to these applications, as well as to the
complaint filed during April.
According to the law for political parties in Bulgaria, the
court is bound to set a trial within one month from the time the
documents for registration are accepted and after to render its
decision within two weeks of trial. The documents were submitted
on September 20, 2006. The Sofia City Court broke the law by
setting the trial date for November 8, 2006, 1 month and 19 days
after the documents were submitted.
Unexpectedly, the Court changed its earlier decision setting the
trial down for November 8, 2006 and rescheduled it for October
18, 2006 which means the timing requirements of the law will be
observed but the party received the required summons only five
days before the date of the trial, not 7 days as is required by
law.
On Monday, October 16, 2006, from 8:00 a.m. groups of four
people each, consisting of a representative of the Prosecution,
local policemen, representatives of the economic police and one
additional person started going to the homes and working places
of people who had signed on to become members of the party.
These groups rudely interrogated, threatened and otherwise
harassed our members by asking them whether they knew that our
party was forbidden in Bulgaria, whether we had paid them and
promised them anything for becoming members of OMO �Ilinden� �
PIRIN; they also asked our members whether they wanted to have
trouble with the law and insisted that the people should
complete and sign a declaration and that they did not know what
they signed when they had filled in their party applications. In
this process old people were intimidated and students were
threatened with exclusion from the academy if they did not sign
a declaration indicating that they had not known what they
signed when they became party members. The same events happened
in the cities of Peshtera and Goce Delchev and on the 18th and
19th of October 2006 in the city of Bansko.
On October 17, 2006 the Party filed three complaints directed to
the Procurator General, the Ministry of Interior and the Justice
Ministry regarding these practices.
At the trial on October 18, 2006 in the Sofia Regional Court
regarding the application for registration of OMO �Ilinden�-
PIRIN, the Prosecution presented over 90 pages of evidence as
grounds to deny the party's registration. The party�s lawyer,
Yonko Grozev, from the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, asked for a
delay in the trial in order to have time to look at these
evidence. His request was denied and he was given 30 minutes to
get familiar at the time and to make his objections.
The Prosecution insisted on a denial of the request for
registration because of incorrect data in the documents, for
example, 66 of the declarations were written by one person only.
In support of the Prosecution�s request for denial of
registration of the party, expert was proffered. The party�s
lawyer wanted a chance to examine the expert, noting that there
were obvious errors, e.g. that the signature of the co-president
of the party Botio Vangelov, placed in the bottom of his
declaration for membership and in the list with the founders,
did not belong to the same person, something to which Mr.
Vangelov, who was present at trial, testified. The request for
examination of the expert was denied. There were about 60
people�s declarations from the police claiming that they had
never made applications for membership in the party but in most
of them the named party is OMO �Ilinden� (which is an
organization existing separately from ours). In some cases, the
named party was "VMRO OMO Ilinden", "VMRO Ilinden" or other
variations. The party�s lawyer requested the chance to examine
the applications offered in evidence in order to determine their
authenticity but this request was also denied.
Another offence of the law was pointed out that Stoyan Mechkarov
who lives in London had become a member of the party, despite
the fact that he is a Bulgarian citizen.
Also presented as evidence were two orders from the prosecutors
of the towns of Sandanski and Goce Delchev for an investigation
of alleged payments or other violations in completing the
applications for party membership. One of them was based on a
complaint from the ultra-nationalistic VMRO-BND for which the
only source were publications in the press during the mass media
campaign to smear our party. Both of them had an authorized
period for investigation which had expired a long time before
the current trial of the court (i.e. October 18, 2006) (although
the results of these investigations were not presented as
evidence as according to the party source, those mentioned had
not proved any violations of the law and that is why they were
not presented in the court).
The Prosecution did not present any evidence that payments were
made to attract party members and neither denied the total
number of the members (almost 6,000), nor complained against the
constitution of the party. Instead, the complaints were aimed at
the foundation committee and insisting that it lacked the
required quorum (the required minimum number of people is
500).
The decisions of the Court in Strasbourg (ECHR) were not
mentioned at all in the current proceeding before the Court. The
court denied all of the requests of the lawyer of the party,
even his plea to be given extra time to present more evidence,
but accepted all �evidence� and demands of the Prosecution and
gave a start of the trial which means that in 14 days ( before
November 1, 2006) a decision will be rendered.
Eventually the Prosecutor declared that OMO �Ilinden� - PIRIN
had violated Article 11 from the Charter of Human Rights - e.g.
the rights of the citizens to create their own parties and
organizations and added that as ground for denial of the
registration. The Prosecution declared in front of the press
that there were underage members on the party lists but at first
their number stated was uncertain, then, according to the
Prosecution only three were found to be underage.
The press showed an interesting change in its behavior. They
took pictures of the empty room, the lawyer and the
representatives of PIRIN (without asking them for their
permission to do so) but at the end of the meeting they took
statements only from the Prosecutor but not from any
representatives of the party. The news accounts of �many errors
in the documents� were published the same afternoon and included
a great number of statements with politicians while nobody
interviewed the Party's press officer to hear the other side of
the story.
Here are some of the published opinions only two hours later:
The Regional Coordinator, fourth in influence in the Bulgarian
parliamentary party �Ataka�(�Attack�) stated on the radio that
the leaders of OMO �Ilinden� - PIRIN should be jailed. �We from
�Attack� in the Blagoevgrad region will do everything possible
to not permit the registration of OMO Ilinden PIRIN.�
The MP from VMRO BND Boris Yachev: �This is the normal way to
stop such people . If this party is registered this will put the
government in a dangerous position when so many other formations
will ask for registration as well� and a many applications for
registration of different minority parties could be expected.
The MP of DSB (Democrats for Free Bulgaria) from Blagoevgrad
region Eliana Maseva: �I agree that if the government would
allow the registration of separatist organizations it will put
the state in a dangerous position affecting national security.
Their formation, clearly, is anti-constitutional.�
The MP from NDSV (a party in the current government) Snezhana
Grozdilova for Blagoevgrad region: �it is normal to expect such
developments, keeping in mind that all of us in Pirin Macedonia
witnessed irregular gathering of signatures from almost
illiterate or illiterate citizens.�
The MP of ODS in Pirin Macedonia Yasen Popvasilev: �Such a party
in Bulgaria shouldn't exist.�
According to the opinion of the party�s lawyer (Yonko Grozev
from the Bulgarian Helsinki committee) the development of the
trial does not leave any current hope for registration of the
party. �I think that our chances for being registered without
international intervention is less than 5%.�
Intervention from the European institutions is our only hope to
defend the right of association in Bulgaria. The moment is
critical because if the trial goes to the Supreme Court it will
not be assigned a time for response and the party could stay
without a registration for years.
It is remarkable the way we have been treated, in light of our
status as a party-observer in EFA. The presence of an observer
in the trial could also have a positive effect.
All of the above seems to be an indirect way of replying to the
verdict of ECHR in Strasbourg that ruled Bulgaria is in
violation of our human rights.
Your Excellencies,
We turn to you for help to make everything possible for
implementing the human rights and democratic principals in
Bulgaria.
With kind regards,
The Leadership of OMO Ilinden PIRIN
Stoyko Stoykov, co-president
Blagoevgrad, October 19, 2006
|
Back to previous page
Back to top
