An interview with Mira and Ivo from “Antifascist Action – Sofia”, Bulgaria
What group are you from? And what is your group doing?
I: We are a part ofthe situation for migrants in Bulgaria a small group called “Antifascist action – Sofia” which exists now for one year. It is not only focused on migrants, but the migration topic is related to nazism, racism and xenophobia. I was part of some other groups before that was focused on migrants but there were very few people there. In 2011, I was part of the No-Border team in Bulgaria. There weren’t many migrants at that time but we wanted to stress to society that migration is not a problem but something that will happen for sure in the next years.*
М: It is important to mention that in Bulgaria there is not a single group that is in solidarity with migrant struggles in a political and radical way. There exists a network for refugee support called “Friends of Refugees” but this network is mostly for individual cases for humanitarian help. I think this is one of the greatest problems we face right now in Bulgaria: the lack of these kind of structures. As for our group, both of us are also members of social centre Adelante which was an autonomous social centre in Sofia and now is a collective in search for a new place.
I: We organized the demonstration against the fascist Lukov March and some smaller actions in reaction to the fact of that people were beaten at the border, and some of them died after that. We want to make cases like this more public but we are doing this together with other people who are sympathizing with the migrants. But the main thing is that we don’t have too many good contacts to migrants and because we don’t have a social centre now, it is also harder to connect with people.