Bias-motivated crimes and hate speech in Bulgaria

This publication is the final report of the project “Scaling up the Role of Civil Society of Vulnerable Communities in Bulgaria to Respond to Discrimination, Intolerance, Hate Speech and Hate Crimes”. The project was co-funded by the European Union Through its Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) Pro-gramme. The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC) is the project’s leading partner. The other partners include DROM Organisation from Vidin, INTEGRO Association from Razgrad, Liberal Alterna-tive for Roma Civil Union Association – LARGO from Kyustendil, the Roma Academy for Education and Culture from Sliven and the

Youth LGBT organisation Deystvie from Sofia. The report summarizes the partnering organizations’ research and observations on bias motivated crimes and hate speech in Bulgaria. It attempts to provide an overview of the development of the problem of bias-motivated crime and hate speech after the democratic changes of 1989. It includes both incidents of such crimes and speech as well as the response of the law-enforcement authorities. Another important aspect is the assessments of some international human rights bodies: the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, the observations and recommendations of the Council of Europe and the UN bodies. The report also presents general statistical data as well as some of the more prominent cases, submitted through the online platform for reporting hate-related incidents, which was developed within the framework of the project.