Serbian Police ‘Not Harassing Bulgarians’

Sofia _ No one is confiscating cars with legal Bulgarian licence plates, Serbian police said in response to claims by a Bulgarian nationalist party that ethnic Bulgarians in Serbia are being harassed.

According to Police chiefs in Serbia’s southern cities of Pirot and Nis, quoted by the Belgrade daily Politika, only one car with Bulgarian tags was temporarily confiscated, while at the same time, there were several impounded cars with Swiss, German and Austrian licences because their owners did not have the right to use them.

The Director of the Customs in the Serbian town of Dimitrovgrad also stated that Customs' employees and police officers regularly checked all cars coming from Bulgaria and Turkey but they have not confiscated a single car with Bulgarian tags.

The Pirot police chief said Serbian authorities had no information about the number of cars with foreign licence plates on Serbian roads since this was "none of their business."

Only one police spokesperson confirmed that individuals living in Bosilegrad had staged a protest over the ban of driving their cars, registered in Bulgaria, adding that not all of those discontent with the alleged ban had the right to drive cars with Bulgarian tags.

The Serbian Police insist that there are no problems, but reportedly, ethnic Bulgarians Serbians, living in the border areas, continue to protest.

Last month, Bulgaria's hardline nationalist VMRO-BND party sounded alarm over what it describes as "the intensifying political repression" of ethnic Bulgarians living in Serbia.

VMRO explains that the repressive measures against the ethnic Bulgarians in the border region of Bosilegrad were currently in the form of the illegal confiscation of cars with licence plates from the Republic of Bulgaria.

More than 30 cars with Bulgarian licence plates had been confiscated by the Serbian authorities only in the town of Bosilegrad without any legal justification, according to VMRO.

The statement of the party adds that the members of the Democratic Union of the Bulgarians in Serbia had sent protest petitions to all relevant state institutions including President Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic.

VMRO-BND also warns that the present situation is likely to cause ethnic tensions in the so-called Western Outlands, which are populated by about 20,000 Bulgarians. Serbia’s population is around 7.5 million.

The Bulgarian political party VMRO-BND is the descendant of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation, which was founded in 1893 to lead the struggle for liberation and national unification of the Bulgarians who remained in the Macedonia and Thrace regions of the Ottoman Empire after the Berlin Treaty of 1878.

Bulgaria had to cede the "Western Outlands" to Serbia according to the Treaty of Neuilly of 1919 following its defeat in the First World War. Read more: Serb Treatment of Bulgarians Irks Nationalists

Last week, Bulgaria’s nationalist Ataka party argued that Macedonia and Serbia can only become European Union members once they return territories taken from Bulgaria after the First World War. Read more: Bulgaria Party Wants Macedonia City Back

Ataka’s demands come as Bulgaria’s political parties prepare for next year’s general elections.
 
This has seen an upsurge in right-wing rhetoric in recent weeks and rising tensions with Bulgaria’s substantial ethnic Turk minority.