The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC), the leading organization for protecting human rights, is about to be shut down, reports Mediapool.

In a video, part of the campaign, several Bulgarian activists, public men and journalists urge for closing down the Committee.

In its video BHC announces that shutting down will be possible only when all human rights in Bulgaria are fully protected. That is why it encourages people to support the campaign, having this goal in mind.

It turns out that many organizations in Central and Eastern Europe, fighting for human rights, are currently facing some serious difficulties of a large scale. In recent years we have been witnessing some far-right ideologies, devaluing of human rights and also a tendency of taking measures which result in the limited actions of the human rights organizations. The latter are constantly exposed to media onslaught, torment and are pressurized to abolish their association.

The message of the campaign – “Let`s shut the BHC down” – can be read as a response to the most fierce critics of the organization, which happen to also very often call for its abolishment and are furthermore against the overall existence of non-government organizations. These people, however, had never given any hint of how Bulgaria might be without such establishments.

It turns out that without the help of associations for protecting human rights, Law on legal aid and the Anti-discrimination law would have been non-existent. What is more, many of the violations in several nursing homes for elderly or in numerous orphanages would have remained hidden.