2024-08-15 15:28:45
Deputies should immediately adopt a law on “foreign agents”, which would limit the activities of civil organizations. This was requested on Wednesday by participants in the joint meeting of the committee for demographic policy and the committee for youth and sports in the parliament.
Both committees are chaired by “Vazrazhdane”. The reason for their meeting was a hearing of the non-governmental organization Single Step, which deals with LGBT issues.
The calls for the “foreign agents” law come just a week after lawmakers approved a ban on LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) issues being discussed in schools. The restrictive measure is similar to the one in force in Russia.
The idea of a law on “foreign agents” is also on the Russian model. It stipulates that any organization, artist, journalist, vlogger who received financial assistance from a foreign foundation must declare themselves as a “foreign agent” and have no right to work at a state university, make political comments and work on projects with state or municipal funding, “Free Europe” reported.
In Russia, this law was defined as a tool to pressure dissenters. “Vazrazhdane” proposed such a law back in 2022, but the then parliament rejected it.
In addition to the MPs and representatives of Single Step, the meeting on Wednesday was attended by many guests, for whom the presiding officer Kostadin Kostadinov emphasized that they came on their own initiative and were not invited. The majority of them defended positions identical to those of “Vazrazhdane”.
Among them were parental and patriotic organizations, a priest, also represented as part of a parents’ association – Bulgarian Parents’ Central Committee, as well as the tabloid author Evgeni Minchev – in a personal capacity.
Minchev’s appearance at the parliamentary committee comes just days after he posted a photo with Russian ambassador Eleonora Mitrofanova. In his Facebook profile, he himself commented that he was invited to the commission, despite Kostadinov’s claims.
The main point of Wednesday’s meeting was hearing from Single Step representatives about their research from this year.
It is an anonymous survey about the attitude of adolescents towards their peers who are LGBT. Such a study was also carried out in the 2017/2018 school year, when it revealed a serious rate of bullying of LGBT children by their classmates.
However, now Kostadin Kostadinov from “Vazrazhdane” has accused the association of carrying out “LGBT propaganda” and earlier even threatened with an investigation by the prosecutor’s office.
Single Step responded that their survey was fully legal, online and completely anonymous. Officials of the organization were not in the schools, and there were no physical advertisements of the survey. No personal data of children who completed the questionnaire were collected.
However, a number of the guests present at the meeting repeated the accusations of “Vazrazhdane” towards the association. One of the participants – Stanimir Minkov from the “Bulgarian Association for Youth and Sports” even said that his organization has its own sociological survey, according to which the majority of Bulgarian citizens are against the acceptance of LGBT people.
He did not provide details, and his association does not have a website. Any other information about her is also missing.
Minkov, however, used the data he cited to request the restriction of associations that work on LGBT topics through a law on “foreign agents”.
“We support a law on foreign agents and we appeal to the people’s representatives to take the necessary steps in this direction as soon as possible,” he said.
“[Такъв закон] is absolutely imperative if we want to limit these millions that are pouring in from the European Commission to do this thing with our children”, said another of the participants – Milena Videnova from BRCC.
During the debates, the deputy from GERB and former minister of sports Krasen Kralev expressed a position against the non-governmental organizations.
“And I am adamant that NGOs have no place in this educational process, unless they are sanctioned by the Ministry of Education and Culture and the institutions,” Kralev said.
In Russia, where such a law exists, it has been used against critical media, vloggers and artists. According to analysts, it serves the regime of President Vladimir Putin as a tool of repression.
Back in 2022, when Vazrazhdane first proposed its Bulgarian equivalent, critics of the bill called it a “civilian death law.”