Walking past the "patriots"
They had gathered on the Central Square of my home town this evening, in front of the Municipal Hall, and I saw them by chance as I was walking by. I had no way of counting them, and I didn't want to come very close to them. Whatever their event was, it seemed that it hadn't officially started.
Most of them were very young men, maybe eighteen to twenty years old. There were even younger boys, maybe as young as 16, and also occasional girls. Their "uniform" was black T-shirts, whatever kind they had. They were carrying some national flags. No signs of belonging to a political party.
There were very few police officers at first, and they were terribly nervous. I approached two of them, and very politely asked them if they knew who organized the event. One of them replied that he didn't know and offered me to walk past them to find and ask the organizers, which I declined.
At one point they (I couldn't tell if all of them) started chanting "Gypsies into soap!" (I couldn't hear well what they said about the Turks). The tension on the police officers' faces became even more obvious, but they didn't do anything although there was an order from the Prosecutor General of the Republic to arrest anybody who incited to racial or ethnic hatred anywhere at those protest rallies. They were too outnumbered to take any risks anyway.
I walked off to where I was far enough form them, and called my gay-activist friend R. in Sofia on my cellphone to tell him what I'd witnessed. He advised me, urged me, to go home ASAP, in case they run rampant in the streets as it happened last night in Sofia. The crowd on the square didn't look physically dangerous, vocal as it was, and I didn't expect them to go anywhere any time soon, but I decided to listen to him.
Then started towards the square again on my way back, with the intention of looking at them again from some distance, and found out that they had started a little march along the main street in the opposite direction, so I had no choice but to walk past them on the sidewalk as they had occupied the street itself (it's a pedestrian area). There were much more police now, so they were behaving more reasonably (no hate speech), but most of the citizens who happened to be walking by were avoiding them like the plague.
The media said they had organized themselves on Facebook, but they were too united (if not perfectly organized) to be random strangers. My guess is that most of them were football fans (not the blatantly obvious football hooligan type, but still potentially dangerous). Nobody looked drunk, from what I could see.
I suspect that even most of the police of my neighbourhood were mobilized for the event, from the look of the local police station on my way home.
Some news pages reported that the event in my home town ended peacefully, without much details or any photos. I don't think there was any TV crew filming them. The batteries of my little camera failed me entirely earlier today, so I couldn't take any photos or videos.
I don't know if they'll gather again tomorrow, and how long is this whole thing going to last.
EDIT: Oh, to hell with paranoia, I'm unlocking this entry.
And here is another report in English of what happened in Sofia yesterday: Roma vs Bulgarians - Who Opened Pandora's Box?
Most of them were very young men, maybe eighteen to twenty years old. There were even younger boys, maybe as young as 16, and also occasional girls. Their "uniform" was black T-shirts, whatever kind they had. They were carrying some national flags. No signs of belonging to a political party.
There were very few police officers at first, and they were terribly nervous. I approached two of them, and very politely asked them if they knew who organized the event. One of them replied that he didn't know and offered me to walk past them to find and ask the organizers, which I declined.
At one point they (I couldn't tell if all of them) started chanting "Gypsies into soap!" (I couldn't hear well what they said about the Turks). The tension on the police officers' faces became even more obvious, but they didn't do anything although there was an order from the Prosecutor General of the Republic to arrest anybody who incited to racial or ethnic hatred anywhere at those protest rallies. They were too outnumbered to take any risks anyway.
I walked off to where I was far enough form them, and called my gay-activist friend R. in Sofia on my cellphone to tell him what I'd witnessed. He advised me, urged me, to go home ASAP, in case they run rampant in the streets as it happened last night in Sofia. The crowd on the square didn't look physically dangerous, vocal as it was, and I didn't expect them to go anywhere any time soon, but I decided to listen to him.
Then started towards the square again on my way back, with the intention of looking at them again from some distance, and found out that they had started a little march along the main street in the opposite direction, so I had no choice but to walk past them on the sidewalk as they had occupied the street itself (it's a pedestrian area). There were much more police now, so they were behaving more reasonably (no hate speech), but most of the citizens who happened to be walking by were avoiding them like the plague.
The media said they had organized themselves on Facebook, but they were too united (if not perfectly organized) to be random strangers. My guess is that most of them were football fans (not the blatantly obvious football hooligan type, but still potentially dangerous). Nobody looked drunk, from what I could see.
I suspect that even most of the police of my neighbourhood were mobilized for the event, from the look of the local police station on my way home.
Some news pages reported that the event in my home town ended peacefully, without much details or any photos. I don't think there was any TV crew filming them. The batteries of my little camera failed me entirely earlier today, so I couldn't take any photos or videos.
I don't know if they'll gather again tomorrow, and how long is this whole thing going to last.
EDIT: Oh, to hell with paranoia, I'm unlocking this entry.
And here is another report in English of what happened in Sofia yesterday: Roma vs Bulgarians - Who Opened Pandora's Box?