Picture: FOCUS News Agency

Police in Strumica raid homes of 6 citizens with both Macedonian and Bulgarian citizenship
 

07 January 2013 | 14:59 | FOCUS News Agency

Strumica. Police in Strumica raided the homes of six citizens with double citizenship – Macedonian and Bulgarian, who were authorised to represent candidates for Bulgarian citizenship. Lazar Mladenov, Chairperson of the Bulgarian Culture Club in Skopje, announced the news for FOCUS News Agency.
On January 2, 2013, under the pretext of carrying out a check for forged and fake documents officers with the Macedonian Interior Ministry rudely raided the homes of the six citizens of Strumica (all with both Macedonian and Bulgarian citizenship), who were legally authorised by Macedonian citizens with Bulgarian self-awareness to represent them in the application for Bulgarian citizenship.
After the raids the six were interrogated individually for two to three hours at the police. One of them was even taken away with a bag on his head.
The police told the people, who were under interrogation, that they did not have the right to file claims and threatened them not to complain before the Bulgarian Embassy. After the interrogation the six were released without being given any documents explaining the purpose and goal of the detention.
In one of the cases the police raid was done only at the presence of underage children, as their father was returning from a trip to Bulgaria. He was informed about the raid when arriving at the border. When the man returned to Strumica the check continued at his office, where the Macedonian authorities confiscated 22 ready Bulgarian passports, 22 ID cards and 30 sets of application documents.
In another case authorities confiscated 52 medical documents from healthcare institutions in Macedonia, which were translated and legalised and ready to be used in the application for Bulgarian citizenship.
All the people, whose homes and offices were raided, were banned from leaving Macedonia.
Many of the affected people sent written complaints to the Bulgarian Culture Club in Skopje. According to them, the latest action of the Macedonian authorities aims at threatening the Macedonian citizens, who express their Bulgarian ethnicity, Lazar Mladenov said.