The party of former DPS leader Ahmed Dogan came out with a sharp reaction against the demolition of the former residence - the Boyana Palaces. As it became clear yesterday, the building was quietly demolished by the new owner, after Dogan and his followers were evicted from the complex last year.
A new, terrifying evidence of conscious, coordinated and purposeful action against democracy in Bulgaria, against the foundations of civil society and against the principles on which the rule of law is built, write the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms, quoted by debati.bg.
This is the only way to define the brutal and demonstrative destruction of the emblematic training base for young cadres of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) in Boyana - a symbol built with the labor, will and faith of generations of Bulgarian citizens in law, freedom and democracy.
This site was not just a building. It was a living institution - the heart of democratic thought and the political culture of the new Bulgaria. Over the past twenty-two years, thousands of DPS activists have passed through this base - people who dedicated themselves to the cause of protecting human rights, local self-government, citizen participation in government, and equality as a fundamental pillar of statehood.
There, leaders were built, responsibility was instilled, human dignity was upheld. There, the morality of the free political process was forged - the place where democracy had a home.
Today, this home was razed to the ground.
An excavator pushed Ahmed Dogan's emblematic palaces into Boyana
Brutal. Demonstrative. With impunity.
It's as if someone wants to take us back to those dark times when fear and lawlessness dictated the lives of citizens. It is as if someone is trying to show that democracy in Bulgaria is demeaning, that the law can be distorted, that the political will of thousands can be trampled on with one excavator and a few forged documents.
There is an act of vandalism, committed through fraud, abuse and substitution of property – a crime not just against a movement, but against the very idea of legality, justice and morality.
This is an attack on the foundations of statehood, against the values of the European Union and NATO, a part of which Bulgaria is proud to be.
Such an act is a disgrace to the institutions if they remain indifferent. A disgrace to the state if it remains silent. A disgrace to society if it bows its head.
Today is a test for all democrats in Bulgaria – regardless of their party affiliation.
No one has the right to remain indifferent when a symbol of freedom is destroyed, when a place where generations of young people were formed, believing that politics can be honorable, fair and focused on people, is destroyed.
We call on all followers of the ideas of rights and freedoms, all democratically minded citizens, public figures, intellectuals and organizations - to express their position, not to allow this act to be suppressed, justified or forgotten. To send their protest declarations to the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (ARF), to the main state institutions, to the media, to European structures and Bulgaria's international partners.
Today we are not just defending a building. We defend the idea that democracy cannot be overthrown.
That freedom cannot be destroyed with concrete and iron.
That human dignity and faith in justice cannot be razed to the ground.
Silence today will be an admission of complicity.
That is why we speak. That is why we protest. That is why we stand up.
Because freedom and democracy are not measured in words, but in deeds – and in the readiness to defend them when they are in danger.
Let us shout that we are not afraid and we will not allow a new totalitarian dictatorship!