Tag Archives: Bulgaria

Bulgarian policemen demand salary increase, new uniforms

Bulgarian police officers, firefighters and other Interior Ministry employees take part in a demonstration in Sofia, Bulgaria, July 5, 2017. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov

By Angel Krasimirov

SOFIA (Reuters) – Thousands of Bulgarian policemen, firefighters and other interior ministry workers gathered in the capital Sofia on Wednesday to demand higher wages, better working conditions and new uniforms.

It is the first major display of anger in the European Union’s poorest state against the two-month old centrist coalition government led by the center-right GERB party which won a snap parliamentary election in March.

The Balkan country is still struggling to root out endemic corruption and organized crime, and observers say local police, prosecutors and judicial system are in urgent need of reform.

The cabinet of Prime Minister Boyko Borissov has said it will honor Sofia’s commitments to the EU to work to boost incomes in line with productivity.

Interior Minister Valentin Radev, however, said wages of the ministry’s employees would remain unchanged this year.

“I hope that we will be able to increase the wages of the policemen in 2018, I do not know why they want it now and immediately,” Radev said.

Police trade unions demanded an immediate pay rise of 15 to 20 percent and said they plan more protests in the coming months. They also asked for increased funding to replace outdated equipment and buy new uniforms.

“The prestige and attractiveness of the profession have declined very seriously because of the low wages,” said Valentin Popov, chairman of the police officers’ trade unions.

“The starting (monthly) salary of a policeman and a fire-fighter is only 662 levs ($383) before taxes. The minimum and the average wage in the country rose by more than 50 percent in the last eight or nine years while the salaries in the interior ministry rose by only 15 percent in the same period,” he said.

Banners carried by firefighters read: “Helmet – 1990, outfit – 2002 – second hand.”

Bulgaria’s average monthly salary was just above 1,000 levs in the first quarter of the year, the statistics office data showed.

“The government’s attitude toward us is inhuman and humiliating,” a demonstrator told Reuters on condition of anonymity. “If things remain like this, I’ll quit.”

Police officers in the Balkan country are not permitted to strike, take a second job or join a political party, but they are exempted from paying social security contributions.

Voter frustration, especially with rampant corruption and organized crime, erupted in months of protests in 2013 and 2014 and the country has had seven governments in the past four years.

(Editing by Radu Marinas and Toby Chopra)

In Greece, refugee women and children live in limbo

Faten 25, (L) from Syria, sits at the edge of the beach beside her sister-in-law near their tent outside the Souda refugees camp in Chios Island, Greece, June 10, 2017. "It's taking too long. This slowness to reunite families scares me," Faten said. "We have nothing to do all day long, we just sit by the tent which I share with my sister-in-law, a friend and her daughter."

y Zohra Bensemra

CHIOS, Greece (Reuters) – Thousands of refugee woman and children are living in limbo in Greece, waiting for the day they will be reunited with their families in other European countries.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says nearly 75,000 refugees and migrants stranded in Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Western Balkans are at risk of “psychological distress” caused by existing in a prolonged state of transit.

About 60,000 refugees and migrants, mostly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis, have been stuck in Greece for over a year after border closures in the Balkans halted the onward journey many planned to take to central and western Europe.

More than a quarter are children and over half the new arrivals have been women and children, according to U.N. data. Men were the first family members to flee to Europe in previous years, leaving others to follow.

“Despair is haunting me at the moment,” said Soha, a 23-year-old Syrian who lives in a tent on the island of Chios with two her two-year-old daughter and other Syrian women.

In the camp, next to the ruins of an ancient castle, overcrowded tents are pitched on the edge of the pebbled shore, and rats roam among the garbage. Women say they are too scared to leave their tents at night, fearing harassment.

Like other women, Soha declined to give her last name or be identified in photographs, fearing it could affect her application to join her husband in Germany.

Family reunification can take between 10 months and two years, UNICEF says, making life particularly hard those left behind.

The uncertainty caused “significant psychological distress and anxiety for children and their families, setting them back for years to come”, UNICEF Regional Director Afshan Khan said.

A one-year-old girl smiles as she sits with her mother, Ibtissam, 22, at the Souda Refugee Camp in Chios island, Greece, June 10, 2017. "I was one month pregnant with my daughter and my son was one year old when my husband migrated to Germany." Ibtissam, who is from Raqqa said. "I feel devastated, at the moment I can’t apply for family reunification because I have to wait until my husband gets his asylum document.... I feel depressed but I have to keep holding on for my children."

A one-year-old girl smiles as she sits with her mother, Ibtissam, 22, at the Souda Refugee Camp in Chios island, Greece, June 10, 2017. “I was one month pregnant with my daughter and my son was one year old when my husband migrated to Germany.” Ibtissam, who is from Raqqa said. “I feel devastated, at the moment I can’t apply for family reunification because I have to wait until my husband gets his asylum document…. I feel depressed but I have to keep holding on for my children.” REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

“I spend most of the day alone,” said Farhiya, a 23-year-old Somali who lives in a volunteer-run camp on Lesbos island.

“The other refugees don’t speak English and I don’t speak Arabic. It’s hard to live alone,” she said. Farhiya applied to join her husband in Austria seven months ago while still pregnant, but has not heard back, she said.

In Athens, 36-year-old Khalissa, who fled Syria with her three young children, spends her days in a drop-in center run by a UNICEF partner, a brief respite from her problems.

She colors in hearts representing her feelings about the past, present and future. The past is blue for sadness, the present brown for fear and the future, in which she hopes to reunite with her husband after two years, yellow for happiness.

Ultimately, she longs to go home.

“If Syria becomes as before the war, I will return home,” she said. “We must return home.”

(Writing by Karolina Tagaris, editing by Ed Osmond)

Erdogan says Bulgaria’s pressure on Turks ‘unacceptable’

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during a meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, March 19, 2017. REUTERS/Murad Sezer

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan slammed Bulgaria on Thursday for “putting pressure” on expatriate Turks living there ahead of a parliamentary election amid rising tension between the two neighbors.

Bulgaria votes in parliamentary elections on Sunday. Last week, its caretaker government summoned Turkey’s envoy to Sofia and also recalled its ambassador to Turkey for consultations.

Prime Minister Ognyan Gerdzhikov said this was to “prevent any attempts by Turkey to influence an election”.

Bulgaria also expelled a Turkish citizen and banned two others from entering the country, after reports a Turkish minister had campaigned for the DOST party that represents Bulgarian Turks, the country’s largest ethnic minority.

“I am calling on Bulgaria. I am calling to our kin and brothers there … It seriously upsets us to see and hear that pressure is being exerted there,” Erdogan said at a conference in Ankara.

Bulgaria’s ethnic Turks are estimated to total more than half a million in a total population of 7.2 million. More than 400,000 Bulgarian nationals live in Turkey, most of them Bulgarian Turks descended from Ottoman-era Turkish settlers in the Balkans.

“On the one hand you say democracy, on the other you are putting pressure on Turks. This is unacceptable. On the one hand you talk of the EU legal acquis, on the other you do the exact opposite. This cannot be,” Erdogan said, using the European Union’s term for its body of existing laws.

Bulgaria called Sunday’s early parliamentary elections after former Prime Minister Boiko Borisov resigned in November following his party’s loss in presidential polls.

Erdogan’s comments come on the heels of an escalating row between Turkey and its European allies over the barring of campaigning among Turkish expatriates in Germany and the Netherlands to drum up support for a referendum in April that would increase his powers.

Erdogan has angered the Germans and Dutch after repeatedly accusing his them of “Nazi methods” over the bans, leading to a sharp deterioration in ties with the European Union, which Turkey still officially aspires to join.

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Ece Toksabay and Tom Heneghan)

Bulgaria Places Troops on Turkish Border

Bulgaria announced they are sending their military to secure the border with Turkey as migrants continue to flood into the nation.

“There is a change in the situation in the past few days and it is hard to predict where the refugee wave will head…so we are standing ready,” Defence Minister Nikolay Nenchev told public BNR radio.

Nenchev said up to 1,000 troops could end up along the border.

The chief secretary to the interior ministry told reporters that around 660 migrants tried to illegally cross the nation’s border but turned back after they discovered it was heavily guarded.

Bulgaria is not the only nation bordering Turkey facing migrant problems.

Greece is blocking migrants at their border with Turkey, resulting in protests from the migrants who depend to be allowed to cross.  Many are refusing the food given out by a Turkish agency and say they will conduct a hunger strike until they get their desires.

“We are not going back,” Ahmed El Latif told the AP. “Either we all die here or we will go to Greece.”

Russia Admits Military Experts in Syria

The Russian government stopped denying they have troops in Syria.

The statement comes one day after the United States asked nations like Bulgaria and Greece to close their airspace to Russian military transports. Bulgaria agreed to the U.S. request but Greece did not publicly respond to the request.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed “advisors” are assisting with deliveries of Russian arms.  The Russian government is claiming the mission of the forces is just to assist the Syrian army in fighting militants.

However, U.S. officials say that Russian transports are also arriving with passenger flights that contain Russian troops putting together a forward base in Syria.

“Any effort to bolster the Assad regime would potentially be destabilizing,” the U.S. State Department said.

Russia has long considered Syrian President Bashir al-Assad a close ally.

Bulgarian Terror Attack Officially Linked To Hezbollah

A terrorist attack on a Black Sea resort in Bulgaria in July 2012 has been definitively linked to the Islamic terrorist group Hezbollah. A homicide bomber approached a bus in the resort of Burgas donated his device. Five Israelis and the driver of the bus were killed along with 30 injured.

Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said the results of the six-month investigation showed the attack was carried out by members of Hezbollah carrying Australian and Canadian passports. Continue reading →