Bulgaria Nationalist Leader Sentenced for Harassment of Ethnic Turks

Politics | April 8, 2008, Tuesday // 00:00
Bulgaria: Bulgaria Nationalist Leader Sentenced for Harassment of Ethnic Turks The leader of the extreme right and nationalist Ataka party has been sentenced for his remarks against Bulgaria's ethnic Turks. Photo by Yuliana Nikolova (Sofia Photo Agency)

The Sofia City Court has sentenced Volen Siderov, the leader of the nationalist and extreme right Ataka party, for his discriminatory remarks against Bulgaria's ethnic Turks.

The news was announced on Tuesday by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC), an NGO dealing with human rights issues.

BHC cites some of Siderov's statements made between 2003 and 2005, in which he talks about the showing of news in Turkish on the Bulgarian National TV, and relates that to the period when Bulgaria was ruled by the Ottoman Empire:

"Bulgaria's state television uses state money, our money, in order to show news in a language that we don't understand. What is more, for many Bulgarians this language is unpleasant because it is related to the language of those who carried out genocide against the Bulgarian nation for a very long period."

"... contrary to all historical facts, which point to the fact that a genocide against the Bulgarian Christian population had been carried out for centuries. It was performed by people speaking the language you heard in the news emission of the Bulgarian National Television. People who spoke this language decimated, slaughtered, enslaved, robbed the Bulgarian nations for decades, centuries."

The BHC announced that the sentence was issued on March 13 but that it became public on Monday.

The Court ruled that "Siderov has created a hostile and threatening environment for the Bulgarian Turks by suggesting a connection between them and events from the past and potentially from the future".

Thus, with his statements, he has performed "harassment based on ethnic affiliation", and the Court has prohibited Siderov from making such statements against the Bulgarian Turks in future.

The case was brought before court by the singer Sunay Chalukov together with the "Citizens against Hate" Coalition.

This is the second sentence against Siderov for hostile statements against ethnic minorities. In 2005 the Sofia City Court ruled his speech was in violation of the legal rights of minorities, and of the public interest.

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