Bulgaria - under deconstruction

One of the things I learned while studying the totalitarian systems, whether they were on the right or on the left was that part of the reason that the totalitarian horrors of the 20th century manifested themselves was because average people didn’t take on the proper responsibilities. They shut their eyes when they should have been open, even though they knew it and they didn’t said thigs they knew they should’ve done and said. And that was what supported those horrible systems. And if you are going to forestall that sort of thing you must do it early, because the longer you wait the higher the price you pay for it.

So, if you don’t get your act together you leave a little space for “HELL” and I really believe that!!

Today we have various cases where people are not acting on time and they are about to lose their freedom! And I’m not talking about places which are already lost to terrorism or war or dictatorships. I am talking about countries where the rule of law is said to be the major factor.

Going specifically in the European Union were the situation is getting blurry and many political analysts are describing it as uncertain we still have most of the countries with sort of stable political and judiciary systems. The eastern parts of the EU though are getting more and more oppressive towards the freedoms and the liberties of the mass media, judiciary system and eventually its own people.

Bulgaria is a perfect example for such as country where everything on the outside seems to be fine mainly because of the wide spread pacifism amongst the citizens. In comparison to other countries in the eastern parts of the EU, such as Hungary, Poland and Romania, Bulgaria is an island of stability.

However, there is an ongoing sort of under the surface process which is slowly but steadily crawling towards diminishing and eventually limiting to minimum the liberties and rights of people.

And exactly that is what we are going to reveal.

In short, the later happenings in Bulgaria were these:

1. If you are arrested for whatever – you are not allowed to have an attorney for the first 48 hours. Same goes for your family and relatives and they will not be notified in this 48 hours. This could of course lead to false statement and eventually making the whole case go away in the precise pattern someone wanted it to go away.

2. In addition to the above mentioned – from 2018 the children which are to be arrested go through the same procedure, but for them the time they have to spend in the county without their parents and lawyer to be notified is 24 hours. Surely you can imagine the stress one kid is going to endure if taken to the police station, interrogated and held for 24 hours. And let us make no joke about Bulgarian police officers. If the kids are part of some important person’s family, against whom there is an open case…. well you can imagine yourselves what the consequences might be.

3. There is another spectrum from what this judicial reform has presented and established and that is the right of freezing the bank accounts of the defendant by the Prosecutor's Office without taking into consideration the fact that in the democratic societies you are “innocent until proven guilty” and not the other way around.

4. And one of the last decisions of the Bulgarian parliament was to accept the changes in the existing “Law for the personal data” according to the new GDPR requirements. According to lawmakers and lawyers it creates possibilities for censorship. The text specifically says that it will apply fines (5 000 to 10 000 BGN) to journalist in case the freedom of speech does not prevail the right of the person under the journalistic investigation to be put into the media focus. And the question here is how they are going to constitute that, and the decision was to come up with 10 rules. This, as you can see, can be twisted and all the journalist and media representatives could go under heavy lawsuits, which instantly creates thoughts amongst the whole media spectrum to think what they are writing about.