Peaceful protest in Sofia

Today's protest against the ZES legislative project  were carried out peacefully and in a good mood, mediapool.bg reports. The meeting were attended by ca 300 protesters, among whom the SDS leader Martin Dimitrov.

Unlike last year, the meeting didn't create much interest in Bulgarian media, and even less in international... Borisov seem to have much bigger problems than protests in Sofia now, as his proposed Euro-commisar Rumiana Jeleva is being critizised for confict of interests.

Be careful tomorrow...

The protest against the ZES legislation will be carried out tomorrow, Bulgaria e Nasha reports. The authorities, Borisov's GERB party in various incarnation have used both whip and carrot to counter to protests.

Next to allowing traffic between protesters and parliament, a move that the protesters think of as sabotage, they yesterday announced changes in the legislation. Police authorities would in the adjusted text only get access to citizens data after after a judge's decision.

The protesters do not think that this is enough, and refer to their demands - the current legislation project should be abandoned, the ministry of interior should be reformed and if new legislation is necessary, the civil society should first be consulted.

The Bulgarian civil society is far from perfect though. Behind tomorrows protest stands 38 different organisations, that are found on the protest's homepage. It seems like anyone who supported the demands on the authorities could join the protest. Among the organisations I find some that I know are key actors in the Bulgarian civil society, like Elektronna Granitza or Zelenite, but there are also some names I am disappointed to see, like Асоциация Общество и Ценности (The Associaton for society and values), who use their homepage to openly propagate against the gay parade in Sofia, and claiming that "science" says that noone is born with sexuality, and Българската национално-радикална партия (The Bulgarian National-radical party), a minor organisastion who their web space to propagate conspiracy theories about how the jews were behind the bolsjevik revolution.

I don't see how organisations who struggle for a democratic, and European Bulgaria, can allow this kind of idiots to soil their projects. What do you think would be The Bulgarian National-radical party's stance on surveillance in case they had any power? My guess is that they would start b registering jews, and then everyone who talked with jews, and then everyone who talked with someone who knows a jew...

So here are my words for those protesting tomorrow: Be careful. I don't think there will be any violence in the streets, tomorrow you are fighting to be heard in media. You are so right abut this, but, please, be more careful about who you let demonstrate with you.

14/1 2010

14 January 2009 was the date when thousand of protesters, from various Bulgarian NGO's gathered in a protest against corruption and mis-government, bigger and stronger than anything the country had seen in years.

The crowd was eventually dispersed violently, something that caused an outcry among civil activists, and helped create a movement of youth calling for a truly democratic Bulgaria, centered around the blog Bulgaria e nasha.

In the following spring, much of the energy, not least at Bulgaria e nasha, was spent at fighting the ZES legislation, that would have given the ministry of interior direct access to citizens electronical data. In the wake of the police's actions at the protest, and with the ministry of interior's history in mind, activists were very concerned about surveillance. I understand them.

Against odds, the activists won. The then ruling socialist dominated coalition did not manage to get the parliament to accept the legislation, before it was ousted and replaced by Borisovs government.

But...

Dissapointed, and more or less surprised, the activists saw how Borisovs GERB, witht the support of Ataka, could easily lead the same legislation through the parliament witout any strong opposition. The same legislation that they had vehemently been against before (at least Ataka).

Therefore, at the 14 of January 2010, a new demonstration has been announced in front of the parliament, the place that hosted not only the demonstrations one year earlier, but also the storming of the parliament in 1997 and the protest against the communist leaders in 1989. The demands are as follows:

1. The responsible  minister should immediately ask for the cancellation of the legislative project.
2. Quick and thourough measures to make the MVR a modern instution meeting European standards
3. In case legslative changes are necessary, these should be done first after consulting a wide range of civil interests and experts
   

Protests in front of the parliament has a strong symbolism, and is probably the last thing Borisov wants. So the Sofia mayor, who comes from his own GERB party, has declined to stop the movement of traffic on the square. The organisors of the protest calls this sabotage, from the mayors office it is said that a part of the square has been reserved for the protesters.

In East European politics, the capital mayors play an important role. Borisovs has managed to get full control over both Bulgaria and Sofia, which makes him unhealthy strong.

IFJ calls Bulgarian authorities to protect the free speech

"The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) have called on Bulgarian authorities to investigate the murder of journalist Boris Nikolov Tsankov" - this is the headline in one of Serbias B92's articles tonight.

It goes on
"The IFJ says the murder of Boris will undermine investigative journalism in Bulgaria as organized criminal gangs try to intimidate media through show of force and violence."

and adds that the IFJ has been joined in its demands by the European Federation of Journalists.

It is obviously a problem that a writer is shot down in the center of Sofia, no matter what is his criminal record, but it is also very problematic when international organisations like the IJF reacts like this without investigating further who Bobi Tsankov was. He was not an investigative journalist. That doesn't mean, of course, that it is safe for investigative journalists to work in Bulgaria if they write about the maffia - if he can be killed so can anyone. The killing of Bobi Tsankov was a horrible murder. But it was not an attack on free media.

Who was Bobi Tsankov

I must admit an error. Bobi Tsankov, who was killed in downtown Sofia on Tuesday, was not a journalist in the proper sense. He had published a few articles in not very renowned publications, and did some radio shows, but more than anything he is famous for being a criminal himself. He has been accused of frauds for millions, and have close ties to organized crime himself. After all, it was exactly those ties boasted that he would reveal. So the murder was maybe more of an inter-mafia showdown, than an open attack on free speech.

My mistake is completely due to not checking my sources before I write. It is elementary, I have done it before, but there is no excuse.

Unfortunately I was not the only one todo this mistake. In Bulgarian TV today, Bulgarians wonder how the international press spread eactly this point of view, without checking out who Tsankov really was. I am sure they did  not take their information from Maladets! BBC describes him as a "prominent crime journalist" Balkan Insigth use the neutral "Radio Host", while NY Times call Tsankov a "prominent radio journalist and the author of a book on Bulgaria's gangsters".

After all, poor Bobi did publish some articles, so calling him a journalist could possibly be justified, even if it is wrong. But from where did BBC and NYT learn that he was prominent?

Unfortunately, in most people'seyes, and in reports about murdered journalists, Bobi Tsankov willbe a journalist, and Bulgaria a country where journalists are killed, which is something much worse than a country where gangsters kill each other.  Sloppy writing, like this is, helps in building prejudices about a country that too few foreigners even bother to understand. I hope you can forgive Maladets!, but the BBC and NYT should be better.

The other side of the story is that a mafia murder was carried out in broad daylight in the very center of Sofia, which is bad enough.  Was Tsankov really going to reveal something, that was so sensitive? Or did someone within the organized crime want to show Borisov who really rules this country? I don't know...

Anyway, journalism should be about telling the truth, and using the label "journalist" for Bobi Tsankov is a bit too imaginative.

Slavery persists. In Africa and in Europe.

An email from the ITUC mailinglist reminded me of a horrible truth. Slavery is a phenomenon that persist, in spite of being denounced by the United Nations and forbidden in most countries in the world. According to Wikipedia, the current number of humans living in slavery is staggering 27 000 000 people. That more than the population of Romania.

The ITUC tells about domestic workers in Togo, often children, who are abused under forms that is nothing else than slavery. As always, poverty plays an important role. There is a Togolese tradition that poor families leave their kids to live with richer families that they know. The rich family feeds the kid and takes care of its education, and in exchange the kid provides domestic services.

Such a system would be oppressive in the modern world, but it belongs to a completely different context and should be assesed separately. Today , however, the same system has been distorted. Poor families leave their kids to rich families that they do not know. Often the kids are put to work the entire day, so there is no education involved. The payment, which can be as low as 8 EUR per month, are not given to the child, but transferred to its family. Since the kids are not formally employed, no labour legislation apply, and the "slave owner" is free to beat and mistreat the child as he or she wishes.

As sad as it sounds, one may not be surprised that this kind of practice is going on in a very poor country. If slavery was restricted to countries like Togo, we might hope that economic development itself would erase slavery. Unfortunately this is not the case. We might only call to mind the domestic workers in the gulf countries, whose working situation is also similar to slavery.

But slavery even exists in the midst of Europe. Balkan Insight has recently published an article, describing how criminal networks lure poor people from countries like Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Transnistriainto forced labour in the Czech Republic. There they work long hours without payment, supervised by armed guards, picking aspargus that later was served on luxury restaurants in Amsterdam and Berlin.

Slavery can exist wherever there is organized crime, and this is one reason why the fight against organized crime is also a fight for human rights. So is the fight against poverty. Because we do not want slavery anywhere. Neither in Togo, nor in the EU.

Bobi Tsankov gunned down in central Sofia

The Bulgarian radio journalist Bobi Tsankov, who has been covering the Bulgarian mafia was shot down in central Sofia today, media is reporting.

The fact that journalist can be gunned down, in the center of the city in the middle of day, speaks very bad about the freedom of press in Bulgaria. What makes the matter even worse is that this is the third fourth similar case since I personally took an interest in Bulgarian affairs (I moved to Bulgaria in December 2007). Three of them were journalists, one was a writer.

In today's Bulgaria, journalists are not risking their lives when they write about politics, but they do that when they write about organized crime. Which make the matter even more complicated. Organized crime is a strong force beyond any democratic control. As society fails to come to grips with that, the press is not free, no matter what the constitution says.

The Borisov government have carried out some widely talked about actions against criminal gangs, but as long as journalists are not safe, they need to prove what they can do. I hope that the people who were involved in the murder of Bobi Tsankov will be caught and judged. As long as they are free, Bulgaria has very deep problems.