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An opinion piece published by Novinite received on Monday one of the special awards in a contest organized by the UNCHR, the Bulgarian Red Cross, and the State Agency for Refugees.
Themed "Together with Refugees", the contest is dedicated to the World Refugee Day celebrated on May 20. A total of six works were selected by a jury made up of representatives of the three organizations, public BNR radio, and the Council on Electronic Media (the latter represented by its chair, Mariya Stoyanova). The winning piece of Novinite, "Bulgaria's Migrant Hunters: Just a Symptom of Flawed Governance", had not been submitted to the contest by the website, but had been nominated by a reader.
Bulgarian Red Cross chair Hristo Grigorov and the UNCHR's new representative for Bulgaria, Mathijs le Rutte, were among the speakers at the event.
"Bulgarians are not xenophobic, they are a hospitable and good people," Grigorov said, replying to Le Rutte's suggestion that, while many in the country had been welcoming to refugees, others had openly raised fears about their potential role in society.
Stoyanova, however, admitted that the specific history of the Balkans, as much in the Soviet as in the Ottoman era, had resulted in "difficulties" before those refugees facing the Balkan realities for the first time.
In the "Broadcast Media" section, the big winner was Ina Galabova from NOVA TV for her report titled "How to Guard the Bulgarian Border?" One of the special awards went to Vasilena Grabcheva, also working for NOVA, for her report "Refugees in the Homeland" exploring the lives of people who arrived in the country decades ago. The second one was handed out to Polina Boteva (bTV) for her documentary titled "In the Mud" depicting the life of refugees in Idomeni.
"Refugees in Kanji?a" was the story that was singled out in the "Print" category, authored by Lora Fileva (Dnevnik.bg). The other special award, apart from the one given to Novinite, went to Georgi Angelov's analysis titled "Germany and 'Dublin' Saved Us from Refugees", published by Trud newspaper.
Earlier on Monday, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced that the number of focibly displaced people around the world had reached a historic high, with 65.3 million, or one in every 113, being either an asylum seeker, an internally displaced person (IDP) or a refugee.
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