Interior Minister Denies Allegations in Human Rights Watch Report

Bulgaria's Interior Minister Tsvetlin Yovchev said he was surprised by the claims in the Human Rights Watch report on the country's immigration policies. 

The report, which will be officially released next week claims that the Bulgarian border police was forcefully pushing back into Turkish territory asylum seeker and was beating and abusing them. 

This, according to Human Rights Watch was being done on a regular basis and there were documented 44 such cases since November 2013. 

Interior Minister Yovchev, however, denied the allegations, and labeled them “blatant lies”, which can be easily verified. As an example he said Bulgaria's border police is not carrying weapons with butts, hence it cannot beat the asylum seekers with butts, as per the claims in the report. Yovchev said the police does not carry tasers, so it cannot use them on asylum seekers. 

“The larger part of the border is equipped with CCTV cameras and everything that is happening there is observed and recorded,” Yovchev said. “The footage can be checked and I can guarantee that there is no violence.”