site.btaFour Parliamentary Groups Submit Draft Declaration against Hate Speech in Bulgarian Politics

On July 29, five MPs of GERB-UDF, Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) submitted a draft Declaration of the National Assembly against Hate Speech in Bulgarian Politics, a search of Parliament's website showed.

The draft is signed by GERB leader Boyko Borissov, Continue the Change Co-leader Kiril Petkov, Continue the Changer Co-chair Atanas Atanasov, MRF Chair Mustafa Karadayi and MPs Daniel Lorer of CC-DB and Delyan Peevski of MRF. 

The draft says that, invoking national, European and international instruments and recommendations, "the National Assembly declares clearly and unambiguously that it will be working selflessly, by all legal means, for countering any hate speech, regardless of whether it manifests anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Christianophobia, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance and hate, in official party communications or in statements by party supporters and party media which are left without consequences". 

"We call on all participants in public and political life, and especially in the parliamentary debate, that we should not allow hate, threats, divisions and verbal violence to be part of us," the draft declaration reads. It calls for remembering the behests of Bulgarian national awakeners and National Revival figures and of the honourable Bulgarians who 80 years ago rescued their Jewish fellow citizens from the death camps, for remembering the organized resistance of  Bulgarian Turks and Muslims against attempts at forced assimilation by the totalitarian regime," the MPs write further on. "It should be kept in mind that the world 'parliament' derives from 'to speak' and not 'to hate', and a platform open to citizens should be set up in cooperation with the Ministry of Interior on which suspicions of hate crime could be reported and thoroughly checked," the draft states.

"Let is safeguard and build national identity together through tolerance and patience left by our forefathers as a pledge for the future of our fatherland in peace and unity," the document says in conclusion.