site.btaCommission for Protection against Discrimination Finds Vazrazhdane Leader Kostadinov Guilty of Spreading Hate Speech, Party Strikes Back

Commission for Protection against Discrimination (CPD) found Vazrazhdane Floor Leader Kostadin Kostadinov and his party guilty of spreading hate speech against Jews, the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC) said here on Monday. The appeal before the CPD was filed by Atlantic Club of Bulgaria President Solomon Passy, represented in the case by Atty. Diana Dragieva of BHC. The decision is not final and is appealable before the court. 

Later in the day, Vazrazhdane reacted by saying that CPD is not a court and cannot convict anyone. They called for the closure of the Commission because "it contributes nothing" and "its only activity is to rule on Facebook statuses of Vazrazhdane representatives".

"The CPD unanimously found that by postings on Facebook and YouTube, Kostadin Kostadinov and his pro-Kremlin party Vazrazhdane had carried out discrimination in the forms of harassment and incitement to discrimination against Solomon Passy on ethnic grounds," BHC said.

The CPD found that Kostadinov and Vazrazhdane created a hostile environment that fueled hatred towards Passy, escalating to hostility toward persons of Jewish ethnicity. In their positions before the CPD, Kostadinov and Vazrazhdane downplayed the importance of hate speech as a divisive factor, BHC noted. 

The comments under Kostadinov's and Vazrazhdane's posts cited in the CPD decision contain extreme anti-Jewish stereotypes, calls to violence, longing for Nazi Germany dictator Adolf Hitler's policies, belittling of the Holocaust, BHC added. "It is unacceptable for an MP, opinion leader, historian and lawyer, as Kostadinov nominally is, to provoke and catalyze such malignant processes on social media, and deliberately so. Although this behaviour is recurrent, the CPD handles restrictions on freedom of speech extremely timidly and delicately, not even imposing fines," Dragieva commented on the decision. 

In a March 10 decision, Varna Administrative Court rejected Kostadinov's appeal against a CPD decision for discrimination in the form of harassment against Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria MP Daniel Lorer.