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On paper, Bulgaria’s policy offers asylum claimants protection – but in practice does the exact opposite.
Viktor Lilov
A recent online discussion on Bulgaria’s asylum system revisited a damning report published in January by migration policy activist group Europe Must Act and written by Felix Diaz, a researcher and psychology professor at New Bulgarian University.
Based on ten in-depth interviews with people on the move – most of them Arabic-speaking and Syrian – the report entitled The Bulgarian Way documents an asylum system marked by pushbacks, detention, humiliation, strategic neglect and the practical sabotage of asylum claims.
The online event brought together Diaz, Mirka del Pasqua, an activist working with people in detention, Hamid Koshsiar of support service organisation Mission Wings, Tiago da Cruz of civil society group From the Sea to the City, and myself, a Bulgarian human rights activist.
At the event, speakers described a situation that appears not to have improved since the report was published, but is hardening; Bulgaria is not reforming an abusive system but preparing to deepen it.
