Bulgarian Students Revolt

Just after 1am inside Sofia University, a handful of young people are spray painting protest banners in a dimly lit corridor. Upstairs in a lecture hall, and dotted around nearby classrooms, fellow students are curled up on the floor asleep. Volunteers in yellow jackets are standing guard at the university gates.

It is the fourth week of an occupation. Hundreds of students in a dozen institutions across Bulgaria have taken over all or parts of their universities, padlocking the gates and adding a new dimension to a movement that has rapidly escalated into the biggest rolling wave of demonstrations since the collapse of communism 24 years ago.

Something has snapped in Bulgaria this year. Fury at corruption and nepotism, youth unemployment at 28.7%, low wages and limited job opportunities that force qualified Bulgarians to find work overseas, and a sense that those in power have for too long put their own interests above those of the country, have coalesced this year into one long pulse of anger.

Public opinion polls suggest that around two-thirds of Bulgaria’s 7.3 million people support the movement. “We have to try to get morals back into our political system,” said Mina Hristova, a 23-year-old cultural anthropology student. “We are here because we need to show our politicians that there are consequences to their actions.”

The state has resorted to bussing in supporters to confront the semi-permanent street demonstrations that have choked Sofia this year. “We’ve gone through difficult times in the last 23 years, but we’ve always found a solution,” the foreign minister, Kristian Vigenin, told the Guardian on a recent march.

The fury spilled out on to the streets in June when tens of thousands marched through the capital in outrage over the appointment of Delyan Peevski, a well-connected media mogul, as head of the State Agency for National Security. Peevski had lost an earlier position as deputy minister of disaster management after allegations of corruption.

For many in Bulgaria this was painful proof of the nepotistic nature of their political system, which, according to Transparency International, is the second most corrupt among the 28 EU member states, beaten only by Greece.

Peevski’s resignation less than 24 hours after his appointment did nothing to quell the anger. Instead, protesters demanded the resignation of the centre-left government of the prime minister, Plamen Oresharski, which had been in office for just six weeks.

Oresharski told the people that it was too soon to judge him, but every day since, protesters have gathered outside parliament to shout slogans and demand real political change. In late July, protesters clashed with riot police after a crowd of 2,000 trapped government officials inside the parliament building for eight hours. It was one of the few nights that saw bloodshed in an otherwise peaceful protest movement.

After five months of protesting, in recent weeks it has been Bulgarian students who have taken the lead, occupying their universities and organising the daily protests outside parliament.

“Every one of us had the feeling that something was wrong from when we were children,” said Ivaylo Dinev, a 24-year-old history student and the informal leader of the student protests. “We’ve seen the influence of the mafia in politics all of our lives, no matter which party is in power. What we need is real change. Before I was 18, I was a rebel without a cause. Now I have a cause.”

Read more at The Guardian