site.btaMilkov: North Macedonia's Interior Ministry Keeps Harassing Bulgarian Associations

"North Macedonia's Interior Ministry continues to act in a manner that the Bulgarian associations in that country describe as harassment," Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Milkov said at a news conference here on Thursday.

"People are summoned for questioning instead of tracking down the culprits," he added. In his words, the search for culprits and punished people does not produce results, "which induces a sense of impunity and an atmosphere of fear in the Bulgarians there."

According to Milkov, the institutions of North Macedonia ignore the changed dynamic in bilateral relations and the commitments to the EU and Bulgaria that their country has assumed. "The two foreign ministries' positive approach is not translated into a consistent policy and even into separate positive actions by any other central-government department of North Macedonia," the Foreign Minister argued. 

Bulgaria has requested information about the progress of investigation of the attacks on the Bulgarian clubs, which have the characteristic features of hate crimes and should be treated as such.

On Monday, the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Bitola  said that other persons, too, will be questioned in connection with an alert according to which the Chairman of the Ivan Mihailov Culture Club in Bitola, came under suspicion of spreading racist and xenophobic material online.  

Milkov said that two-way trade between Sofia and Skopje for 2022 will top BGN 1 billion.