Protest to CoE by Macedonian newspaper in Bulgaria
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From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 12:29:52 +0200 (EET)
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Subject: Protest to CoE by Macedonian newspaper in Bulgaria
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Minorities Information Service
<[email protected]>
Protest to CoE by Macedonian newspaper in Bulgaria
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>From the moderator: Let me remind that the list moderator must not necessarily agree with the views expressed by the senders. Some rhetoric of the posting does not sound appropriate to us. In the meantime, recent decision of the Constitutional Court of Bulgaria condemned by human rights NGOs (see
http://racoon.riga.lv/minelres/archive//03022000-09:22:50-20089.html)
indicates that the problem does exist...
Boris
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To the Council of Europe, Strasbourg
To all human rights organizations
Amnesty International
Human Rights Watch/ Helsinki
Dear Sirs,
We send you this protest letter from the independent newspaper
"Narodna Volja" in Blagoevgrad, the only Macedonian monthly newspaper
in Bulgaria. The reason for the protest is the recent exclusion of the
Macedonians as a national minority in Bulgaria and the lifting of
international monitoring by the Council of Europe.
After several years observations of the political process the
euro-deputies Atkinson and Gjelerod left Bulgaria without mentioning
anything about the people who feel Macedonian by ethnicity and are
living in Bulgaria. This has caused all Macedonians a great distress
and feeling that Europe has forgotten about their plight. For years,
the Bulgarian state and the Bulgarian nationalist propaganda have been
misleading the world that the Macedonian national minority in
Bulgaria does not exist, that the term Macedonian actually means
Bulgarian and that historically, culturally and linguistically there
is no difference between Macedonians and Bulgarians. Today we witness
the shameless manipulation by the Bulgarian state of a most honorable
institution as the Council of Europe.
Even after allowing the existence and the registration of OMO ILINDEN
PIRIN, a Macedonian political party, the political establishment of
the country has not changed significantly i. e. the official view has
remained that the Macedonian national minority does not exist. We
would like to mention that the several mayors of villages and council
members who were elected during the last elections are Macedonians,
members of the Macedonian party. For what reasons are Macedonians
ignored when they even partecipate in local government?
We therefore appeal to you to help remove this great injustice and
help include the Macedonians as a national minority in all Council of
Europe documents related to Bulgaria.
We also invite you to meet with us and give us an opportunity to show
you that Macedonians are a part of the national minorities in
Bulgaria. We urge you to join our appeal for a reconsideration of the
Council of Europe decision.
We thank you for your attention.
IAN PIRINSKI
Editor in Chief
Narodna Volja
e-mail: [email protected]
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