site.btaAddress to Manuel Sarrazin

ASSOCIATION OF DESCENDANTS OF REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS FROM THE TERRITORY OF THE REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA AND FRIENDS

TO MR MANUEL SARRAZIN

SPECIAL ENVOY OF THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT FOR THE WESTERN BALKANS

manuel.sarrazin@bundestag.de

COPY TO THE ASSOCIATION OF EXPELLEES IN GERMANY

info@bdvbund.de

berlin@bdvbund.de

COPY TO THE MASS MEDIA IN BULGARIA, GERMANY AND AUSTRIA

DEAR MR SARRAZIN,

The reason for our address is Your interview, taken by Alexander Andreev and published on the 19th June 2023 in the Bulgarian newspaper "Capital". You state that "given the numerous, including emotional, tensions between Bulgaria and North Macedonia, our (Germany's) aim was to create confidence in the Macedonian side that they can take this step with regard to the Bulgarian minority". Elsewhere in the same interview you say again that "as far as the resolution (of the Bundestag on the recognition of the "Macedonian language", o.n.) is concerned, it has a number of different aspects. However, the most important thing is this: Germany wants to do everything necessary for the successful adoption of the amendments to the Constitution of North Macedonia which include the Bulgarian minority in this Constitution."

Our association was created by people originating from the group of over 400 thousand Bulgarian citizens, descendants of refugees or settlers from the territory of the present-day Republic of North Macedonia, who in turn are part of the approximately 1.3 million Bulgarian citizens who declare themselves to originate from the geographical area of Macedonia. We decided to address you on August the 2nd – the date on which the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising broke out in 1903. This was the most massive uprising for liberation of Macedonia and Adrianople (Southern) Thrace. It was raised mainly by Bulgarians, who were joined by a certain part of the Vlach (Aromanian) and Albanian population. All the documents of the rebels were written in literary Bulgarian.

As a stakeholder organisation, directly expressing the interests of part of the population of nowadays North Macedonia, we are deeply concerned by the fact that you are talking about a Bulgarian minority in the country. As it is well known, the category of "minority" is absent from its constitution. With regard to future changes, thise part of the Bulgarian people which, together with parts of other peoples, lives on the territory of North Macedonia, is to be included.

We have been waiting to see what would the development of this case be, but we regret to note that Your messages are being tendentiously perceived by politicians in North Macedonia and are becoming an element of the prevailing language of hatred against everything related to Bulgaria, existing since the end of 1944. For example, on the 25th of July, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of North Macedonia, Bujar Osmani, was critical of the fact that an increasing number of citizens of North Macedonia are declaring themselves as Bulgarians and are applying for Bulgarian citizenship, citizenship of an EU member state. Mr Osmani said: "There is no greater Bulgarianisation than the withdrawal of the (Bulgarian, o.n.) passport, the number reaches 100,000, as a result of the delay in integrations. The inclusion of Bulgarians in the Constitution is a formalisation of the fact that we are talking about two different peoples. For the first time in the Constitution we will have a Macedonian people as a majority and part of the Bulgarian people as a minority."

We are outraged that in this statement the Bulgarians are the object of attack by the authorities once again, while there are no objections against those North-Macedonian Albanians who receive citizenship of Albania and Kosovo or against those North-Macedonian Serbs who receive citizenship of Serbia.

Although the Bulgarian and German peoples have quite different historical fates and accumulated experience, some analogies can be found between the two nations. Die Presse's publication from the 10th of November 2018 states that "Austria was founded in 1918 as a German nation state". Here we would like to point out that at the same time, according to data from the last census in the Ottoman Empire in 1906, which is official, since this state had ruled the geographical area of Macedonia for over 500 years, the total number of Bulgarians was 762,754. At the same time, Bulgarians constituted the majority of the population in most of the territory that nowadays encompasses parts of North Macedonia. We hereby enclose data for some towns and districts as annexes.

When in 1913 Serbia conquered the present-day territory of North Macedonia and began the expulsion of our ancestors, 761 Bulgarian churches with 833 priests, as well as 641 Bulgarian schools with 1013 teachers were closed there. Altogether in the geographical area of Macedonia after 1913 more than 1300 Bulgarian churches with 73 Bulgarian monasteries, 7 Bulgarian bishops and 1310 Bulgarian priests were closed, as along with 1370 Bulgarian schools with 2266 teachers. Those Bulgarian teachers and priests, in their great majority natives, were either expelled or killed.

On the basis of this data we could assume that in the early twentieth century Austria was socio-culturally German, and the geographical area of Macedonia, and especially this part of it that was included in present-today North Macedonia, was socio-culturally Bulgarian.

Although the number of Austrian citizens who define themselves as German is currently smaller than the number of people who do so as Austrian, no one calls Austrian Germans a "German minority" in Austria. On the contrary, in Austria, the Burgenland-Croatian ethnic group, the Slovenian ethnic group, the Hungarian ethnic group, the Czech ethnic group, the Slovak ethnic group and the Roma ethnic group are represented as minorities, but it is not customary to speak of a local "German minority". Today's self-definition of Austrian citizens does not affect the interpretation of the past, no one in Austria persecutes Austrian Germans, and Austrians themselves do not deny their affiliation to the German socio-cultural space. There are no ethno-cultural differences between those who feel Austrian and those who feel Austrian German.

In view of the objective facts of the past, there could be a "Bulgarian minority" in North Macedonia as far as there is a "German minority" in Austria. We should stress out that nowadays there are no ethno-cultural differences between the citizens of North Macedonia who define themselves Macedonians and those who define themselves Bulgarians. They have the same culture, speak the same language, but call it by different names. For Macedonians it is Macedonian and we do not object to that. But by those who have preserved their Bulgarian identity, it is still called Bulgarian, as it was by all the revivalists born in Macedonia. Since the local Bulgarian dialects have certain minor differences with the literary Bulgarian language in Bulgaria, as the German dialects in some areas of neighbouring countries have even greater differences with the literary German in Germany, it would be more correctly to call the official language codified in North Macedonia by the local Bulgarians as Macedonian Bulgarian language. This language, with the exception of 6-8% of Serbianisms artificially inserted into it, is understandable for the Bulgarians in Bulgaria.

Unlike Austria, however, the authorities in North Macedonia follow the old Yugoslav policy of denying any Bulgarian affiliation even in the past, which is why they continue to pursue a totally repressive policy in the present. For this reason, today we demand for the Bulgarians in North Macedonia the same human rights as the Germans in Austria! That is why we take the liberty to paraphrase a slogan formulated by Ivan Mihailov, the legendary last leader of the IMRO founded in 1893, from "Macedonia - Switzerland of the Balkans" to "North Macedonia - Austria of the Balkans"!

Although the 2021 census in North Macedonia was manipulated and 20,000 people had their Bulgarian ethnicity transformed into "Bulgarian citizenship", while another 120,000 were not at all visited by census takers and the data for them was entered ex officio, at this moment from a theoretical and practical point of view it does not really matter what the exact number of citizens of North Macedonia with varying degrees of preservation of their Bulgarian identity is. What is important, however, is that they are present and therefore cannot be considered a "minority" in view of their centuries-old structurally defining socio-cultural role that continued even after the beginning of their forced expulsion or assimilation.

Since we believe that there must be selfless solidarity in the EU in terms of applying universal criteria of humanity, we are also sending our appeal to the Association of Expelled Persons in Germany – we hope that they will understand us most easily. The mass persecution of Bulgarians in Macedonia dates back from 1913. The Germans were expelled en masse from Eastern Europe after 1945, with the Yugoslav authorities expelling them from Banat and at the same time beginning a new form of de-Bulgarianisation in Yugoslav Macedonia - a policy which even today continues to find continuity in North Macedonia. For this reason, we insist that in Germany there should be a correct attitude towards the Bulgarians in North Macedonia – not as a "national minority", but instead as part of those Bulgarian people who are living there. We also insist that the responsible political actors in Germany make the necessary efforts to assist in a genuine reform in North Macedonia and simultaneously guarantee the basic human rights of the Bulgarians there as a fundamental requirement for the country’s EU membership!

Association of Descendants of Refugees and Migrants from the Territory of the Republic of North Macedonia and Friends.

CO-CHAIRMAN: Prof. Trendafil Mitev

CO-CHAIRMAN: Assoc. Prof. Spas Tashev

SECRETARY: Dimitar M. Dimitrov            

Sofia,

Ilinden (Saint Elijah's Day), August, 2, 2023