[*] I’m writing this in Croatia which tomorrow, Wednesday, June 22 will celebrate the day against fascism.

There are two things that I need to mention. Firstly, this is an official holiday.

Secondly, the focus of this day is not so much on the past but on the present. It’s rather a day against neo-Nazism. And again, a holiday throughout Croatia.

Two days ago, during the Zagreb Pride, five people were followed and severely beaten. Croatia has a problem with neo-Nazism. But Croatia is trying to solve it. In Bulgaria five people were severely beaten with metal pipes by neo-Nazis. This happened in a tram, in broad daylight. The victims were going to the rally organized early in the month in front of the Institution for Temporary Accommodation of Foreigners in Busmantsi. I was one of the four official organizers of the rally, so it’s quite clear that this is not going to be a moderately analytical text. It’s personal. And it concerns you just as personally.

The day after the Busmantsi incident, the minister of interior, Tzvetan Tzvetanov, announced that these were “clashes between different extremist organizations, left and right”. This is absurd, of course. The protest in Busmantsi was peaceful and legal. The people didn’t go to a fight but to a rally in defense of human rights. And they were beaten by people who get sick when they hear about human rights. This was the difference between the two groups and not the “left” or “right” extremism.

Many things happened in the days that followed. A wider group of activists organized a flash mob at the popular Popa intersection in Sofia. Some 60 participants blocked the two boulevards for about 10 minutes. The media heard about this. So did the Nazis.

Several individuals were detained in relation to the incident in Busmantsi. The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee sent an open letter to Tzvetan Tzvetanov in which it said it would monitor whether all participants in the assault would be charged. We stated that the crime has been committed with an obviously discriminatory motive: attack of individuals due to their participation in a public event in defense of foreigners. We insisted that this cause be clearly established by the investigation and taken into consideration as an aggravating circumstance in punishing the perpetrators. In its letter the BHC underlined that this case is not about “a fight between youth gangs” or “clashes of anarchist groups” and that the rise of neo-Nazism is an extremely dangerous trend manifesting itself in more frequent assaults on different groups in Bulgaria: foreigners, LGBT, activists of different organizations. The BHC said that this phenomenon needs to be recognized and addressed instead of being filed as “hooliganism”.

In the next days the so-called free nationalists from the National Resistance sent Bulgarian and foreign institutions a declaration in which the insisted for “freedom for the innocent”, that is, everyone detained for the battery in the tram. We should mention here that no one had insisted that all detainees be convicted but for a punishment of the culprits. Let the competent bodies find out whether the groups overlap. And do it promptly.

This week the newly-formed Citizen Initiative “Let’s Stop Neo-Nazism in Bulgaria” sent an open letter to media and institutions, appealing for a “clear position on the increasing manifestations of neo-Nazism, xenophobia and racism by extreme right groups” and that the necessary measures be taken to punish the neo-Nazi excesses. The letter describes several neo-Nazi acts in just a few weeks. Several days after the incident in Busmantsi, some 20 neo-Nazis with bats assaulted Roma coming back from a concert, meters away from the presidency building. A video published online shows a Stara Zagora municipal official and a former deputy-mayor celebrating Adolf Hitler’s birthday on April 20. The video shows the cutting of a cake with a swastika and Hitler’s portrait hanging on a wall. Recently it became known that two years ago a student was killed in the Borisova Gradina Park in Sofia by a group of youngsters who were “cleansing” the area of people who looked gay to them.

The third gay pride will take place in Sofia on June 26. At the 2009 parade the Nazis mostly showed the finger; after all, it was an election year. But at the first pride there were Molotov cocktails flying. It would be interesting whether the horrible but quite realistic scenario of clashes will materialize this year, and whether they will once again be filed as “fights between extreme groups”. And whether the neo-Nazis will once again be demoted to “hooligans”. And whether we’ll keep cutting the weed instead of plucking it.

You know, it’s just like with the cockroaches. They appear out of nowhere in your home. You try to solve the problem by yourself. But apart from being abhorring, they are quick to hide and even when they die from your poison others keep coming up the pipes. More and more of them. The only way for you to solve your cockroach problem is to have the building manager let the exterminators in the basement. But the building manager likes cockroaches. Or he doesn’t care. Or he insists that these are not cockroaches but beetles. And he wouldn’t give you the key to the basement. The only thing that you can do once you’ve stopped ringing his doorbell is to start kicking his door.

[*] The author is Campaigns Director at the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee. [back]