site.btaBulgaria Commemorates Victims of the Communist Regime

ESD 14:08:31 01-02-2021
LG1420ES.110
110 POLITICS - COMMUNIST REGIME - VICTIMS - COMMEMORATION

Bulgaria Commemorates
Victims of the
Communist Regime


Sofia, February 1 (BTA) - On Monday, Bulgaria marked the Day of Homage to the Victims of the Communist Regime.

On February 1, 1945, three regents, 22 ministers of five governments in office between February 11, 1940 and September 8, 1944, eight royal advisers, 67 MPs of the 25th Ordinary National Assembly and 47 senior military officers were executed at Sofia's Central Cemetery after being sentenced to death earlier that day by 'People's Court' Panels One and Two. On the initiative of former Bulgarian presidents Zhelyu Zhelev and Petar Stoyanov, February 1 has been officially marked as the Day of Homage and Gratitude to the Victims of the Communist Regime since 2011.

"I do not differentiate between victims depending on the regime that killed or repressed them. It is my firm belief that the memory of all innocent Bulgarian victims is sacred," President Rumen Radev said at a news conference on Monday. "I see the desperate attempts by [Prime Minister Boyko] Borissov and his entourage to divide the nation into communists and anticommunists. My first concern is the unity of the Bulgarian people, we must bury all political violence in the past," Radev appealed.

For his part, Borissov wrote in his Facebook profile: "May the memory of all victims of the communist regime live forever! Seventy-six years ago, the so-called People's Court -- that neither belonged to the people, nor was it a court -- started one of the darkest trials in our history. Illegitimate, primitive and out of political control, it physically eliminated part of the nation's elite. Unfortunately, there are voices still saying that this crime was 'necessary and unavoidable justice'," Borissov pointed out, adding that there are still politicians who are shy to speak on the topic, while pretending to be democrats.

National Assembly Chair Tsveta Karayancheva also commemorated the victims.
"Today we honour the victims of the communist regime and the thousands of broken lives. We mourn the memory of the representatives of the intellectual, spiritual and economic life who lost their lives to the totalitarian repression. But also all those common Bulgarians whose dreams, dignity and future were brutally crushed by an arrogant establishment that came into power through violence and lies," Karayancheva wrote on Facebook. NV/MT