site.btaUPDATED President: We Must Not Compromise Security, Ability to Defend Bulgaria

"Our conviction, belief and urge today is that we must not compromise our security and our ability to protect our home and our children," President Rumen Radev said Saturday in Madzharovo, Eastern Rhodopes. He spoke at a ceremonial commemoration dedicated to the 110th anniversary of the Destruction of the Thracian Bulgarians. 

He said that the occasion brings centuries-old grief of several generations of Thracians, which is why Bulgarians gather in this region with its unique nature and history to dig the embers of memory and to honor with silence the burial ground of their ancestors.

"The Pantheon Ossuary in Madzharovo is among the sacred places that preserve the tragic memory of the Thracian Bulgarians massacre, of the thousands brutally killed by the ferocious bashibozuk, of the innocent martyrs and the countless impoverished refugees from Adrianople and Belomorian Thrace." Rumen Radev said, adding that the Pantheon also preserves the memory of the handful of their selfless defenders who still managed to protect the lives and honour of thousands of women, children and elderly who set out to seek salvation in a free Bulgaria. 

"Our ancestors preserved their dignity and managed to preserve the strong Thracian root from which new dedicated generations grew," the Head of State emphasized. In his words, today generations bear the testament not to forget the terrible lessons of the past, but also not to seek revenge. "We, the people of this region, know about this tragic episode not from history books, unfortunately. Such events in our textbooks are becoming fewer and fewer and the description of them is getting further and further away from reality," Rumen Radev said. According to him, for the locals, this is not just a memory, but a faith, a conscience, and a blood bond. 

"We bow before the thousands of innocent victims and the fighters for the freedom of Thrace who left their bones in the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie uprising and on the battlefields of the Balkan War," the President concluded his speech.

Radev told journalists that he had always argued that politicians should work to preserve and develop the defence capabilities of the Bulgarian army, "this is our first national priority", as quoted by his press service. 

The ceremony was followed by the laying of wreaths and flowers at the monuments of the voivodes Dimitar Madzharov, Russi Slavov and Captain Petko Voivoda, and the presentation of the mobile exhibition "Thracian Epopee" prepared by the union of Thracian Societies in Bulgaria and the Institute of Thracology.