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".