Nationalist Threats Shadow Sofia Pride's 10th Anniversary

Various international organisations have called on the Bulgarian authorities to ensure the security of the LGBTI activists who will march in the Tenth Anniversary Sofia Pride on Saturday in the centre of the Bulgarian capital after threats from extreme nationalists.

Rights groups, as well as the pan-European ALDE liberal party, have expressed concern that the Sofia municipality has allowed a rival event organised by the ultranationalist non-formal group National Resistance under the slogan "Let's clean Sofia of trash" to take place almost at the same time and at the same location.

The nationalist rally has been presented as an initiative for cleaning up the park where the Monument of the Soviet army is located, and where the Pride march will begin on Saturday.

But National Resistance's leader Blagovest Asenov - a radical linked to the international neo-Nazi organization Blood and Honor - has called on for supporters to join him to "cleanse the plague", picturing Pride as a "triumph of pathology over normality".

ALDE's leader Guy Verhofstadt urged the authorities to prevent any violence.

"I call on the Bulgarian authorities and the Mayor of Sofia to act to safeguard all those planning to participate in the Sofia Pride March scheduled for this weekend. Far-right violence against the LGBTI community has no place in the European Union of 2017," Verhofstadt said in a statement on Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also expressed fears that the counter-demonstration could result in attacks on Sofia Pride.

Over 27,000 people have signed a petition on the All Out platform, calling on Sofia's mayor Yordanka Fandakova to put measures in place to keep Pride marchers safe, condemn any targeted attacks against...