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".