VMRO representatives gathered at a rally near the parliament in Sofia in support of the journalist and doyen of the Bulgarian community in the Republic of North Macedonia Vladimir Perev, who was attacked on Monday in Skopje.
Since the 1990s, this man has been defending the rights of Bulgarians, Angel Dzhambazki, a member of the VMRO leadership and former MEP, told journalists. The attack on Perev was dictated precisely by national hatred with the words “because of your dirty Bulgarian mouth“, he commented.
Dzambazki announced that yesterday they filed a report with the Sofia District Prosecutor's Office and insist that the SRP investigate this crime, since according to the Bulgarian Criminal Code, the Bulgarian state has the obligation to investigate, prosecute and punish crimes against Bulgarians committed abroad.
He also announced that they have also sent a letter to all European representatives and to the European Commission, in which they have attached the latest cases of attacked and beaten Bulgarians in the Republic of North Macedonia (RNM). We have also prepared a legal memorandum, which we will send to all members of parliament, which is about systematic violations against persons with Bulgarian identity in the RNM and the legal obligations of the EU institutions in the accession process, Angel Dzambazki pointed out. He added that it described why and how this behavior of the authorities in the Republic of North Macedonia does not allow this country to negotiate for EU membership. According to him, this is a weapon in the hands of Bulgarian diplomacy, as long as it has the courage to deal with this topic.
In support of Vlado Perev, Blagoy Shatorov was also at the rally - a Bulgarian who was forced to leave the Republic of North Macedonia due to institutional pressure from the Macedonian services and police, and came to live with his family in Bulgaria.
Shatorov said that he had three small businesses - several taxis, a flower shop, in front of which police were stationed and customers were forbidden to stop their cars for traffic safety reasons. We are already well here, but there are many people in Macedonia who cannot clarify their nationality for fear of what is happening to me, to Ljubcho, and now to Vlado Perev - an 80-year-old man beaten by a man in his prime, he commented. The man has done nothing wrong, he writes newspaper columns in which he shares memoirs from his childhood, how his father, who was a tailor, would gather with other people from Prilep in the tailor's studio and talk about Bulgarianness, Shatorov pointed out.