Letter of the Macedonian Bulgarians to the EU Ambassadors

Dear Mr/Ms Ambassador,

As you probably know, a few days ago yet another act of violence was committed in Bitola against the Cultural Centre of the Bulgarian community. After pouring petrol upon the Ivan Mihailov Centre, it was set on fire in broad daylight. This new act of intimidation came after a vicious campaign against the Bulgarian people in North Macedonia. President Pendarovski, Prime Minister Kovachevski and Minister Osmani took actively part in the public accusations against the registered dub in Bitola, claiming only until yesterday that Vancho Mihailov was a 'hitlerist* and if you follow the same logic, so were we, the Bulgarians of Macedonia. And we came to the point when this lie led to another act of national hatred just in the style of the Kristallnacht of November 1938. Well, who is a fascist now? And why did not any of you - our European partners - react to this shameful act? This was a direct and proven result of the state-subsidized hate campaign against our Bulgarian people in North Macedonia! This was the result of the ongoing substitution of our Bulgarian national identity ever since the Yugoslav occupation of 1944 to the present day. The instigators of the fires come from the same circles that for decades have being writing nonsense in the textbooks, who have being turning our children against their own Bulgarian people. If you, whom we hoped would help start the democratization of the regime, had not accepted tacitly the falsification of the census, we would not have been witnessing this lawlessness today. Had we been only 3,500, they obviously would not have been afraid of us and would not have set fire on us. Gentlemen,

would you have kept silence had an Albanian mosque been set on fire?! For we would certainly have reacted to any violation of the democratic rights of any group of our citizens.

Mr/Ms Ambassador,

The members of the Ivan Mihailov Club are not Bulgarian citizens. But we are among the hundreds of thousands who keep the memory of our true origin and history. We will remain faithful to the legacy of Gotse Delchev, Tod or AJexandrov and Ivan Mihailov. And we will not be afraid of the arsonists and their provocations. We ask you, Mr/Ms Ambassador, as a representative of a country of the European family, which we want our homeland to join, to protect our Bulgarian people in North Macedonia from the government-inspired hatred and from the violence it has given birth to.

Sincerely,

Lyubcho Georgievski

President

Cultural Centre of the Bulgarian community "Ivan Mihailov", Bitola /BGNES