Bulgarians in Moldova Cry Foul, Beg Sofia for Help

The Taraclia State University was co-founded by Bulgaria and Moldova in 2004. Languages of instruction are Bulgarian and Moldovan. Photo from panoramio.com

The historic Bulgarian minority in Moldova has complained to the Bulgarian government and the foreign diplomats in Kishinev of "unprecedented discrimination measures" by the central authority.

The region of the town of Taraclia, which is heavily populated by ethnic Bulgarians, has asked the Bulgarian government for help after an emergency meeting of the local town councilor, the Novi Region paper announced.

The meeting was convened as the local Bulgarian community has been alarmed by measures of the new Moldavian authorities affecting their rights, terminating all state funding for the Bulgarian-populated regions, and cutting the support for Bulgarian schools and teaching Bulgarian language.

Moldova is home to one of the largest Bulgarian communities outside Bulgaria. The Bulgarian minorities in the region of Bessarabia, today in Moldova and Ukraine, formed in the 16th-19th century when people from Bulgaria proper fled atrocities in the Ottoman Turkish Empire to the safety of the region which was back then part of the Russian Empire.

The local authorities in Taraclia, the center of the Bulgarian community in Moldova, have declared their outrage by the failure of Moldova's Prime Minister Vlad Filat to keep his promises, with the central government in Kishinev being about to terminate all funding for the Bulgarian municipalities.

In their cry for help to Sofia, the Bulgarians in Moldova also made it clear that their situation has worsened tremendously after the supposedly pro-European center-right government came to power in the country in 2009.

The first alarming sign for them was the shutting down of the St. Cyril and St. Methodius Lyceum at the Taraclia State University.

Furthermore, a program the new Moldavian government adopted in the fall of 2009 excluded the Bulgarian university, the Taraclia State University, from the government priorities.

The ethnic Bulgarians in Moldova are now alarmed by Kishinev's plans to terminate completely the funding for teaching Bulgaria, and say that the central government is using budget cuts to shut down the schools in Bulgarian populated villages.

The local councilors in Taraclia have decided to quit the government optimization program to preserve the teaching of Bulgarian but this move has been fought back by the central government.

The Bulgarians say that despite PM Filat's promise to preserve the Bulgarian schools in Moldova, other government representatives have told them that "these promises cannot be kept."

As of February 27, 2012, Moldova's government has been blackmailing the government of the Taraclia region by not providing the legally required budget funds, which has now moved the local Bulgarian community to appeal to all foreign diplomats and to the Bulgarian government in Sofia asking them to pressure Kishinev to end its discrimination.

They have also asked the Bulgarian government to help fund the operations of the Bulgarian schools in the densely Bulgarian-populated areas of Moldova.

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