Bulgaria Parliament Honors Victims of Communist Regime

Co-chair of the Blue Coalition, Martin Dimitrov, asked MPs to bow their heads for 60 seconds in memory of victims of the communist regime that started on September 9, 1944. Photo by Sofia Photo Agency

Bulgarian MPs have held a minute's silence in memory of Bulgarians who died for their ideals in the 20th century after a proposal by the leaders of the right-wing Blue coalition.

Co-chair of the Blue Coalition, Martin Dimitrov, asked MPs to bow their heads for 60 seconds in memory of victims of the communist regime that started on September 9, 1944.

Bulgarian Socialist Party leader and former PM Sergey Stanishev later urged the nation to honor the memory of all Bulgarians, who were killed by repression in the twentieth century.

Deputy Chair of the ethnic Turkish DPS party, Lyutvi Mestan, said it was time for the Bulgarian Parliament to set August 23 as a day on which Bulgaria both honors the victims of Nazism and Stalinism, as do other EU countries. "Everything else smells like retro," he concluded.

August 23 is also marked in Bulgaria for the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising against the Ottoman Turkish Empire.

The number of victims of the communist regime in Bulgaria has been estimated at anywhere between 2 700 and 30 000.

 

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