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Chaos has been reigning in the refugee shelter in Bulgaria's southern town of Lyubimets for three days now. Photo by www.vice.com
Thirty two Syrian refugees from the shelter in Bulgaria's southern town of Lyubimets have declared hunger strike.
One of them has told Nova TV that they are upset by the slow process and the red tape in Bulgaria granting them official refugee status.
Syrian Tarek says chaos has been reigning in the shelter for three days now and compares the conditions there as those of a prison.
Tarek has already spent 44 days in the Lyubimets shelter and wishes to receive official refugee status ASAP in order to start a normal life. The deadline for the procedure in Bulgaria is 6 months, but the protesters deem it way too long.
"I want freedom. My family is still in Syria and I have been disconnected from them. For 10 days now I don't know anything about them. I came here as a refugee, not as a criminal. They want to keep us in this jail for 6 months, but we will strike until they give us freedom. We don't want to stir trouble and break the rules, but the situation here is truly unbearable," Tarek explains.
The Bulgarian Interior Ministry has commented that the State Agency for Refugees is working to find ways to improve conditions in the shelter and speed up the procedure.
Four years after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, integrating Ukrainian refugees into Bulgarian society remains a complex and pressing challenge
A 37-year-old Syrian citizen has been sentenced to four years in prison following a conviction for committing acts intended to satisfy sexual desire without intercourse and for extorting BGN 50, according to the Sofia District Prosecution Office.
Nearly 6,000 Syrians applied last year to return voluntarily to Syria under a program financed by Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF)
The Syrian government has reached a ceasefire agreement with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) following several days of intense clashes in northeastern Syria.
As of November 30, 2025, over 4.3 million non-EU citizens who fled Ukraine were under temporary protection across the European Union, according to Eurostat
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa assured Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday that he intends to uphold all prior agreements between Syria and Moscow
Bulgaria is set for a mostly sunny day on Tuesday, March 10, though early hours will be marked by cold temperatures and pockets of fog in many areas, according to the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (NIMH)
More than 2,600 Bulgarian citizens have left countries in the Middle East and Iran since the start of the evacuation efforts, according to information from the Situation Center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as of 09:30 today
Bulgaria is seeing a notable rise in prices, with the latest monthly inflation reported at 0.3% and annual inflation at 3.3%, according to preliminary data for February released by Atanas Atanasov
Last night, 120 Bulgarians who had been stranded in the Maldives finally returned home aboard a charter flight operated by the Bulgarian airline GullivAir.
The operation to evacuate Bulgarians stranded across the Middle East is ongoing, as authorities work to bring citizens to safety amid rising regional tensions.
Employees of “Bulgarian Posts” staged protests today in several cities, including Sofia, Burgas, and Ruse, temporarily stepping outside post office branches to make their demands known.
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