Armenian citizens are subjected to severe discrimination by the Bulgarian border police

ArmInfo. The Bulgarian border police has introduced 

harsh discriminatory measures against Armenian citizens crossing the 

country's border. Overt and blatant discrimination based on 

nationality and citizenship and overt cases of xenophobia on behalf 

of border police officers began to gain momentum after Bulgaria 

joined (with reservations) the Schengen legislation of the European 

Union. As a result, dozens of Armenian citizens entering with 

Bulgarian Schengen visas obtained in Armenia are forced to endure 

degrading hours of outright abuse at the airports of Sofia and 

throughout Bulgaria.

The general director of ArmInfo News Agency, together with a group of 

Armenian citizens, as well as a dozen tourists who purchased a group 

tour to resorts in Bulgaria, recently became another "victim" of 

moral abuse from the police officers on duty at "passport control" at 

Sofia airport. From a large queue of passengers who arrived on July 

21 at night very late from Yerevan, on a flight of the most 

undisciplined, but also the cheapest airline in the world, Wizzair, 

Bulgarian passport control officers, without delving into the essence 

and purpose of the arrival, as if according to a template, selected 

from the queue exclusively citizens of Armenia , in whose passports 

there was their own Bulgarian "Schengen visa". They were detaining 

people, entire families with small children, without explanation of 

the reasons, with an insistent request to "stand and wait". Having 

collected several dozen passports in a pile, they forced people to 

meekly languish in anticipation of the "sentence", periodically 

shouting at them not to twitch too much and to behave quietly as if 

it were a question of the selection of lepers in a military hospital, 

or even worse - about identified "non-Aryan" elements before being 

sent to the camps.

When asked by a journalist by what right such chaos is happening at 

the airport, and how it is connected with Bulgaria's entry into 

Schengen, one of the officers proudly opened up: "You, Armenians, are 

a nimble people. You need strict control, you have found a loophole 

to flee to Europe illegally". And when asked why then collect 

documents and issue visas to people at the consulate so that later on 

torment them at the border, he simply shrugged it off. And not at the 

"Border control" window, but somewhere in the corridors, 

interrogations of each, in fact, detained person began with the 

following stupid content like: "are you a spouse?", "why do you have 

such a strange name?", "why did you decide to vacation in Bulgaria?" 

and other questions, sometimes related to purely personal issues. 

Posing as psychologists, these narrow-minded and, apparently, 

little-intelligent and unprepared officers for such service behaved 

so unceremoniously that it was clear that someone at the top had 

granted them such unlimited power; power to humiliate an individual, 

power to ignore basic human rights and freedoms, power to exert 

psychological pressure and emotional violence, power to deliberately 

create an atmosphere of anxiety and fear.

As the General Director of ArmInfo was informed at the Armenian 

Embassy in Bulgaria, the incident on July 21 is not the first case of 

such discriminatory attitude towards guests of Bulgaria - citizens of 

Armenia. 

They reported here that they not only know about this problem, but 

are doing everything to stop this practice. The embassy sent a note 

of protest on this issue, but by the time of writing the article had 

not received any response. We can only hope that the words about 

"warm, friendly relations between two peoples and countries that have 

a long history and are connected by historical ties and destinies" 

will not be ignored.  However, it seems to us that the problem is not 

some incomprehensible and random rise in the level of xenophobia in 

the Bulgarian government, in this case, towards the Armenians, but 

most likely in internal problems and in the country's obvious 

unpreparedness for joining the Schengen Agreement . By the way, 

Austria and a couple of other EU countries opposed this accession. 

And apparently they were right. And the Bulgarians decided to prove 

the opposite, today "breaking over the knee" the very essence of 

"Schengen".  Perhaps there is clearly a conflict between two 

departments of the country - the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which 

issues visas, and the Police, which spits on these visas from the 

tenth floor. Therefore, almost a "force operation" is organized 

against civilians of the same Armenia and this is done 

indiscriminately, seeing in every Armenian guest flying to Bulgaria a 

potential criminal, threatening the country to be misunderstood by 

European officials who "gave" Bulgaria "Schengen", and as a result 

turn out to be "under-Schengen".