site.btaUPDATED Skopje Prevents MEP, Foundation Head from Honouring Bulgarian Dead at Novo Selo

GERB/EPP MEP Andrey Kovatchev, Bulgarian Memory Foundation President Milen Vrabevski and another three persons were not allowed by border authorities of the Republic of North Macedonia to attend an event Saturday to commemorate the fallen Bulgarian soldiers near Novo Selo, Kovatchev told BTA. None of them were detained.

For more than ten years, Kovatchev said he has regularly visited the military cemetery at Novo Selo to pay tribute to the Bulgarian soldiers fallen for their country. The ceremony is organized by the Bulgarian Memory Foundation headed by Vrabevski, he explained, adding that this time they had been surprised and stopped from entering North Macedonia without any explanation given. In fact, they were given a piece of paper which said there was "a decree not allowing their entry in the Republic of North Macedonia".

The Bulgarian MEP said he was exceedingly mystified by this development as they had met North Macedonian Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani just several days previously. We, said Kovatchev, supported them to launch accession negotiations with the European Union, adding that he cannot understand why the Bulgarians have been treated in this way. He assumed that it could be due to very strong "old-time inertia in the services, dating from the Yugoslav era" and that it was even possible that authorities at ministerial level were unaware what those at the border were doing.

Kovatchev said that he had informed North Macedonian Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani, who is in New York together with Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski, and he, too, had been unaware how the situation stood precisely.

According to Kovatchev, the so-called "deep state" is still functioning and it does not want European membership but is trying to sabotage it.

There is nothing better on such a holiday than to pay tribute to the fallen in a very European way, with the flag of the Republic of North Macedonia, with the Bulgarian flag - something that has been done for 16 years by the Bulgarian Memory Foundation; with the anthems of Bulgaria, of the Republic of North Macedonia and of Europe; with children, with flowers, with the service of Metropolitan Nahum of Strumica, the MEP added. He pointed out that a co-celebration with representatives of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church had been planned, "a very nice thing that was marred and I can't understand why," he said.

The Bulgarian military cemetery in Novo Selo is one of the few preserved in the Republic of North Macedonia. Seventy-one Bulgarian officers and soldiers of the 11th Macedonian-Adrianople Volunteer Infantry Division and the 2nd Thracian Infantry Division who died in the First Balkan War (1912-1913), the Second Balkan War (1913) and World War I (1914-1918) are buried there.