Vandalism
Desecrated mosque in Blagoevgrad, March 3, 2015
Xenophobic graffiti was found at the Higher Islamic Institute in Sofia (February 15), mosques in Shumen (March 16), Asenovgrad (May 15), Gotse Delchev (June 19 and August 10), Targovishte (June 20), Blagoevgrad (September 16) and Yambol (December 18).
On June 4, graffiti saying “death to Jews” and depicting swastikas were found on the announcement board at the Central Synagogue in Sofia.
On January 2, Asenovtsi Monument - four kings of the Second Bulgarian Empire, established in Veliko Tarnovo was painted in the colours of the nationalist movement, followed by a call to love Bulgaria.
On May 15 hackers of Turkish organization Milli Güçler ("national power") on Thursday broke the official website of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. Visitors of the site for a few hours could see a background screen, where the following text was published in Bulgarian with the Turkish flag on the background: “Official site of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is locked in response to a vandalism attack on the “Dzhumaya Mosque” in Plovdiv”.
On February 23, unknown vandals desecrated a monument to the Soviet army in Sofia. Ukrainian flag was drawn on the commemorative inscription and one of the sculptures was painted in Ukrainian yellow-blue colours.
A memorial to Bulgarian partisans in Sofia was desecrated on the night of March 5. The monument was painted with national colours of Ukraine and Poland. On the pedestal, vandals wrote “Putin, go home”, “Crimea 2014” and “Katyn 05.03.40”.
On May 8, a tomb monument to the soldiers of the Soviet Army was desecrated in the Sofia Lozenets quarter. It was then painted red on August 2.
On the night of May 9th, Monument to the Soviet Army in Sofia was highlighted in the form of a flag of the European Union. Also, using light effects on the monument there was an inscription "This monument is the symbol of the crimes of the Communist regime".
On September 7, four people, including a candidate MP from the Reformative Bloc, were arrested in Sofia for writing “Occupiers” on the Soviet Army monument.
On August 31, vandals destroyed tombstones on a Russian military cemetery and desecrated a memorial complex in Veliko-Tyrnovo.
In January 2020, vandals attacked tombstones at a Jewish cemetery in the town of Shumen in northeastern Bulgaria. As a result of the attack, Jewish tombstones were seriously damaged and fences were destroyed.
The regional organization of the Organization of Jews in Bulgaria "Shalom" appealed to the regional prosecutor's office about vandalism. “We hope that responsible institutions will find those responsible and ensure that such actions are not repeated in the future,” the organization said. Photos from the war in Ukraine were vandalized in Sofia. Some of the images of the dead and wounded are white spray-painted with the letter Z, which Russia uses as a symbol of its invasion. The photographs were widely presented on Vasil Levskogo Boulevard in Sofia by the Fotofabrika Foundation. They are part of the festival, which is held in Sofia for the ninth year in a row. The exhibition was called "Ukraine: Crime Archive" and includes photographs from Reuters. "Our team noticed the letter Z in the pictures late Friday morning," said Emmy Barow, Director of the ""Photo Factory. The foundation filed a complaint with the police department responsible for the area where the vandalism occurred. The Z sign is applied to 4 out of 30 photographs of the exhibition. There are photographs in which it is not the image that is not corrupted, but the inscription is corrupted, explaining where and under what conditions the photographs were taken.
