Macedonia and Bulgaria: Political Relations

[Big Bad Sven]

Bulgarian Ambassador in Macedonia Attacked by Nationalist 'Hooligans'

Bulgarian Ambassador in Macedonia Attacked by Nationalist 'Hooligans'

Bulgarian Ambassador in Macedonia Attacked by Nationalist 'Hooligans'

Novinite.com
Diplomacy | May 4, 2012, Friday| 23 views

Nationalist "hooligans" have staged an organized attack against a delegation led by the Bulgarian Ambassador in Macedonia Ivan Petkov, which was trying to lay flowers at the grave of Bulgarian revolutionary hero Gotse Delchev (1872-1903).

The newly-appointed Bulgarian Ambassador Ivan Petkov together with local Macedonian Bulgarians attempted to lay wreaths at the grave of Gotse Delchev in the St. Spas Church in Skopje, on day of Delchev's death, May 4, when he and those accompanying him were attacked by Macedonian nationalists, the Focus news agency reported citing witnesses.

According to Macedonian Bulgarians from the delegation, the attackers were from a nationalist wing of the ruling Macedonian party VMRO-DPMNE.

The Bulgarians attempting to honor revolutionary hero Gotse Delchev were attacked with force, and thus forced to flee, failing to lay flowers at the hero's grave.

The authorities in Macedonia's capital Skopje have prevented Bulgarian diplomats and Macedonians with Bulgarian self-consciousness from honoring the grave of Gotse Delchev at several instances in the past on both Delchev's birthday – February 4, and the day of his death – May 4.

Focus news reminds that back on January 13, 2007, Bulgarian citizens were attacked and beaten by Macedonian nationalists upon laying flowers at the memorial of Bulgarian female hero Mara Buneva, who resisted the Serbian / Yugoslavian occupation of the region of Vardar Macedonia in the 1920s.

Common history is a major issue in the relations between Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia since the latter was considered an inalienable part of the Bulgarian nation until communist Yugoslavia invented a Macedonian nation in 1943-44, and subsequently undertook a meticulous campaign for the creation of a distinct Macedonian national identity that was supposed to be different from the Bulgarian one.

The years after Yugoslavia's collapse and Macedonia's independence in 1991 have seen both an intensification of Macedonian nationalism based on the identity invented in the Yugoslavian period, and an erosion of the Macedonian national idea, with a few dozens of thousands of Slavic Macedonians claiming Bulgarian citizenship on the grounds of their Bulgarian ethnicity.

Gotse Delchev (1872-1903) was a key figure in the liberation movement of the Bulgarians from the historic and geographic regions of Macedonia and Thrace that remained in the Ottoman Empire after Bulgaria's National Liberation in 1878, which however included only some of the Bulgarian populated territories in the regions of Moesia and Thrace.

Delchev was one of the leaders of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO ; VMORO in Bulgarian), which was originally founded in 1893 under the name "Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees".

While in the years before the Ilinder-Preobrazhenie Uprising of 1903 – the largest uprising of the Bulgarians in Macedonia and Thrace against the rule of the Ottoman Turkish Empire – VMORO's goal was to unite the respective regions with the liberated Bulgaria, after the uprising was crushed, the organization split into several factions with different agendas. Macedonia's ruling political party VMRO-DPMNE, as well as two political parties in Bulgaria - VMRO-BND and VMRO-NIE - all claim descent from the original liberation organization.

Keeping in mind the multiethnic population of the regions of Macedonia and Thrace at the time, Gotse Delchev is known to have voiced the vision of creating an autonomous entity out of the European remaining European provinces of the Ottoman Empire, a vision that was not rejected by the Bulgarian governments in Sofia at the time even though they never doubted the Bulgarian identity of the Slavic Macedonians.

Delchev's remains were transferred to the authorities of the communist Yugoslav republic of Macedonia in the late 1940s by the authorities of communist Bulgaria, which, following the Comintern policies imposed by the Soviet Union, briefly accepted the invention of a distinct Macedonian identity.

[George S.]

The macedonian govt should do something to diassallow this sort of thing going on.Especially when the bulgarian govt doesnt recognize the pirin macedonia.Obviously these people are trying to brainwash even normal macedonian citizens given half a chance into thinking they are bulgarian.Who are they to dictate to people who they are.Perhaps a press release to stop this dictatorial nonsense & get back to reality.
Perhaps mto can draft a press release on the lines that we in the diaspora find it obnoxious for bulgarian influence from the bulgarian govt to convert people who are macedonians on the pretext of being bulgarians.We would like macedonian govt to put a stop to it & kick those people out for practicing this sort of thing.

[Soldier of Macedon]

I am not really concerned about their 'influence', just about ensuring there is fair-play. Thus, no Bulgarian 'organisations' should be allowed to operate in Macedonia until the Macedonians in Pirin and Thrace are allowed their full rights.

[ProMKD]

Hello everyone, I didn't find a "new members introduce yourselves" topic, so I will just start posting on these threads. Some of you may know me from other forums/websites, but either way I look forward to meeting all of you, and participating in this forum! There are lots of interesting topics that I still have to read.

Regarding this topic, I was actually going to post it myself since I just read the original Dnevnik article before coming here. I can't believe any anti-Macedonian crap like this is allowed to be preached from the heart of our own capital city. This is treason, and if the creator of this propaganda is a citizen (he must be), then he should be immediately jailed for treason. Not because he thinks he's bulgayrian, but because he is obviously spreading hate and claiming Macedonian history as if it belongs to someone else. It's bad enough we let it happen in other countries, can't let it happen at home!!

[lavce pelagonski]

If he hate Macedonia so much why doesnt he just move to Greece with the rest the others on that forum. All they do is post threads that we have and comment instead of coming over here.

[United MKD]

They have a clip on youtube posted by some Serb who thinks Skopje is Serbian, I dint post it on here as it is g@y

Yeah I saw it also. That Wasko is such a low life loser he just travels around Skopje recording events then puts them on youtube and greek forums. He really must be living a very lonely life and sad life in Macedonia.

[lavce pelagonski]

They have a clip on youtube posted by some Serb who thinks Skopje is Serbian, I dint post it on here as it is g@y

[VMRO]

Macedonian Authorities Said to Terrorize Family for Being Bulgarian



Zdravko Zdraveski, a former Macedonian policy, is said to have been tortured by FYROM authorities for his Bulgarian self-determination.

The family of Zdravko Zdraveski from Prilep, Macedonia, has been constantly terrorized by the authorities in FYROM for declaring themselves to be Bulgarian, according to a media statement calling for help.

Zdraveski, 45, his wife Dobrila Zdraveska and their three children have been under constant harassment by the authorities in the Republic of Macedonia because of their declaration to be ethnic Bulgarians, says the statement by Image Advertising, a PR agency based in the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Burgas.

The statement is rather untypical since it is has not been submitted by a client of the PR agency but by the agency itself, which has in effect issued a call for help asking anybody who could support the repressed family to do so.

After years of repressions in Macedonia, Zdraveski's family is reported to have been reduced to hunger and poverty and is now seeking refuge in Bulgaria.

Zdravko Zdraveski is said to be one of the founders of the restored VMRO party in today's Macedonia. The VMRO party is the descendant of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (VMORO), which at the beginning of the 20th century fought first to free Macedonia and Thrace from the Ottoman Empire and to unify these regions with Bulgaria.

Zdraveski's wife is a granddaughter of the voivoda (a leader of an armed band of rebels) Georgi Stoyanov, who was killed in battle against the Ottoman forces in 1903 defending the so called Krushevo Republic declared by the rebels in the town of Krushevo during the 1903 Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising organized the by the VMORO.

Zdraveski's family was first repressed by the authorities in 1994 for owning books and literature in Bulgarian language. The books were confiscated and Zdravko Zdraveski was thrown briefly in jail.

During the VMRO-DPMNE government in Macedonia of former PM Ljupco Georgievski in 1998-2002 – which is generally believed to have been friendly towards Bulgaria – Zdraveski served in he Macedonian police where he was in command of a rapid reaction force called "Lions". In 2001, he participated in the fight of the Macedonian police against the ethnic Albanian separatists in Western Macedonia. After the 2001 war he went on to serve in the special forces.

According to the report, because of his self-determination as Bulgarian, in 2005, Zdraveski was fired from the Macedonian armed forces, and was stripped of his rank as captain. In 2007, he is said to have been the victim of a fabricated trial on fraud charges and was jailed. Subsequently, the witnesses who testified against him renounced their testimonies saying they had been forced to make them, the Image Advertising report says.

Zdraveski's sentence was appealed and corrected by the Supreme Court in Macedonia but he still spent 2 years illegally in the Idrizovo jail in Skopje, and then in a prison in Prilep, up until 2010, and during that time he was constantly tortured and beaten. He is said to be keeping all the teeth that he lost during the jail beatings in a small bag.

The report says that Zdraveski developed an infection because of his wounds and barely survived as he was refused medical aid. All beatings and torture are said to have been designed to make him renounce his Bulgarian self-determination.

The head of the prison where he was jailed, a man named Dragan Penkov, is reported to have prevented Zdraveski from meeting with his family and with five lawyers who were made one after another to give up defending him.

The Image Advertising statement says that while Zdraveski was in jail, his brother and his brother-in-law were killed, and that the cases were reported as "household incidents" while the real murderers are free. One of these murderers is said to have been threaten the family of Zdraveski's older daughter that he will "finish them because they are Bulgarians."

Zdraveski's case has been brought to the attention of Spas Tashev, an advisor of the Bulgarian Diaspora Minister Bozhidar Dimitrov. Tashev met Zdraveski while the latter was still in the Prilep prison.

After Zdraveski was released from jail in September 2010, he came to Bulgaria together with his wife and three kids as the family feared for their lives.

At present, the family lives in the southwestern Bulgarian city of Blagoevgrad without employment and income. According to the Image Advertising agency, it has not received any support from the Bulgarian state or NGOs.

The agency stresses that Zdraveski's visa will expire on December 22, 2010, and he will be forced to got back to Macedonia together with his family where "there is a real threat for their physical liquidation."

The agency plans to stage a press conference with the participation of the Zdraveski family in order to "present to the public the fascist methods of repressions and genocide in the Republic of Macedonia" against those Macedonians declaring themselves to be Bulgarian.

"The case will be taken to the world and European human rights institutions – the UN, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Commission and the European Parliament. Letters will be sent to the diplomatic missions of the USA and the EU member states in Sofia regarding the genocide against the Bulgarians in FYROM which has turned into a policy of this state," says the statement, which also provides a bank account for donations to be made to help the tortured family.

Reports of cases of harassment in FYROM against Macedonians who declare themselves to be ethnic Bulgarian are not infrequent. Until the first half of the 20th century the majority of the population of the geographic region of Macedonia were considered to be ethnic Bulgarians. In 1944, communist Yugoslavia formally set up a Macedonian nation and made the so called region of "Vardar Macedonia" (as opposed to Aegean Macedonia which is a region in Greece and Pirin Macedonia which is a region in Bulgaria) one of the six Yugoslav republics.

After Macedonia (FYROM) became independent in 1991, the Bulgarian authorities and public have protested vigorously against attempts by Macedonian officials and historians to "rewrite history" by proclaiming medieval and modern Bulgarian figures and events to be Macedonian, and against harassment of Slavic Macedonians who declare themselves to be Bulgarian.

Officially, the Bulgarian government has been seeking to improve its relations with the state of Macedonia but Slavic Macedonians (as opposed to the ethnic Albanian population in Macedonia) are widely seen as being part of the Bulgarian nation, at least historically.

These views have been translated in the official naturalization policy of the Bulgarian state, which is granting Bulgarian citizenship to increasing numbers of Macedonians based on proof of their Bulgarian origin, even such as Ottoman documents from the 19th century.

In 1991, Bulgaria became the first sovereign nation to recognize the independence of the Republic of Macedonia from the former Yugoslavia. In the late 1990s, Bulgaria and Macedonia worked out a compromise under which Bulgaria recognized Macedonia's right to call its constitutional language "Macedonian" even though it still considers it a dialect of Bulgarian.

[VMRO]

Latest Bulgarian propaganda

NGO Urges Bulgarians in Macedonia to Declare Their Identity during Census



Pictured: a poster of the Bulgarian Cultural Club in Skopje, a NGO, urging Macedonians with Bulgarian self-consciousness to declare themselves as Bulgarians during Macedonia's census.
The Bulgarian Cultural Club in Skopje, an NGO, has started a campaign encouraging Macedonians with Bulgarian self-consciousness to declare themselves as Bulgarians during Macedonia's current census.

The Bulgarian Cultural Club in Skopje has released a video and poster "whose aim is to spread the truth about the ethnic character of the population of Macedonia", as cited by the press service of the Bulgarian nationalist party VMRO.

The motto of the video, which features major Bulgarian historical figures from Macedonia such as St. Kliment Ohridski (author of the Cyrillic alphabet), medieval Bulgarian Tsar Samuil, Farther Paisiy Hilendarski (author of Bulgaria's first history), revolutionary Gotse Delchev, among others, as well as Bulgaria's Apostle of Freedom Vasil Levski, is "Ancestors' Memory Calling".

The campaign further poses the question, "All of them were Bulgarians. What about you?"

The video and poster also demonstrates how those Macedonians with Bulgarian self-consciousness can declare their Bulgarian self-determination and Bulgarian as their native language.

The Chair of the Bulgarian Cultural Club in Skopje Lazar Mladenov has issued a call for spreading the video and posters online in order to reach as many Macedonians as possible, the VMRO party says.

About 40 000 Macedonians have acquired Bulgarian passports since 2002 on the grounds of "Bulgarian origin." For the purposes of naturalization, Bulgaria's government considers the Macedonians of Slavic origin to be entitled to claim ethnic Bulgarian origin for historical regions.

In recent years, Bulgarian historians and nationalist circles have been speaking out against the "falsification" of Bulgarian history used to "create" a Macedonian nation by the authorities of the former Yugoslavia in order to dissociate the population of what is today the Republic of Macedonia with Bulgaria.

There has been an increasing number of reports about the harrassment by Macedonia's authorities of Macedonians declaring themselves to be Bulgarians. Notable cases in the past two years include the fate of young mother Spaska Mitrova from Gevgelija and the family of Zdravko Zdraveski from Prilep.

[Phoenix]

This made me lol training for what? about how to get bribes and act like an asshole? Last year, we couldn't drive in Bulgaria without giving bribes in every 40-50km. and i know that this is the norm in Bulgaria since they opened their borders after communist era. Ofc Turkish license plate makes things worse and you end up seeing an idiot with giant beer belly who speaks like "hey komshiya, para var?, hajde yallah"

Onur, consider it a form of bakshish...I wonder where the Bulgars got that idea from...lol

[Onur]

the training of its civil servants and the boosting of its administrative capacity.

This made me lol training for what? about how to get bribes and act like an asshole? Last year, we couldn't drive in Bulgaria without giving bribes in every 40-50km. and i know that this is the norm in Bulgaria since they opened their borders after communist era. Ofc Turkish license plate makes things worse and you end up seeing an idiot with giant beer belly who speaks like "hey komshiya, para var?, hajde yallah"

[Soldier of Macedon]

Mactruth, have you ever seen Gruevski, Ivanov or anybody else from their government speak about Bulgaria's mistreatment of the Macedonians in that country?

[Mactruth]

Bulgaria Prepares Memorandum for Macedonia's EU Future ahead of FM Visit

How about Bulgaria allow Macedonians to self IDENTIFY as Macedonians on their census without harassment? How about OMO PIRIN be recognized as a political party? How about the Macedonian politicians have some balls to address these when they are in Sofia?

http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=131651

The Bulgarian cabinet is expected to adopt Wednesday a Memorandum of Cooperation with neighboring Macedonia on its European and Atlantic integration.

The document mandates that Bulgaria will assist Macedonia in its efforts to become a member of the European Union and NATO.

The Bulgarian government hopes to effectively support the integration of its neighbor and to enhance friendly relations between the two countries.

Among the activities foreseen by the memorandum is the harmonization of Macedonian legislation with the acquis communautaire, the training of its civil servants and the boosting of its administrative capacity.

Thursday Macedonian Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikola Poposki is going to make an official visit to Sofia, which will be among the very first since his assuming office.

Macedonian press have commented that the trip of the Foreign Affairs Minister is a sign of his intention to warm up ties with Bulgaria.

Among the topics to be discussed is a so-called "Friendship Treaty" proposed by Bulgaria in 2008, which has provoked controversy in Macedonia due to a perceived encroachment on the affairs of the country, and has yet not received an official response from the Macedonian side.

[Prolet]

TM, Lets discuss the Macedonians in Pirinska Makedonija for a change, why did Ljubco sign off their rights in 1999??

[Pelister]

It begs the question why won't Gruevski open 'negotiatons' with the Bulgarians, I mean they have about as much a 'claim' to Macedonian territory as the New Greeks do which is to say they have zero rights to Macedonian territory.