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Police Break up Bulgaria Parliament Blockade, Evacuate MPs

Police Break up Bulgaria Parliament Blockade, Evacuate MPs
folder_openUnited Kingdom access_time10 years ago
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Local Editor

Anti-riot police broke up a protesters' blockade of Bulgaria's parliament early Wednesday and escorted out over 100 ministers, lawmakers and journalists who had been trapped inside for over eight hours.


Police Break up Bulgaria Parliament Blockade, Evacuate MPsPoliceman with shields pushed away the anti-government protesters and formed a tight cordon barring all access to the stately building in downtown Sofia at around 3:00 am Wednesday morning.

Several gendarmerie trucks were then seen leaving the area, he added.

Media correspondents trapped inside parliament, confirmed that three ministers - of economy, finance and labor - and other lawmakers from the ruling Socialist party and their loose partners from the Turkish minority MRF movement were escorted out first.
The building was fully emptied by 5:00 am when heavy construction machinery started removing the protesters' barricades made of park benches, garbage containers and paving stones.

An earlier attempt to free some of the besieged lawmakers late Tuesday had ended up in skirmishes between the 2,000 protesters and police, leaving at least eight protesters and two policemen injured, hospital sources said.
The clashes were the first violence seen in 40 days of massive rallies in the EU's poorest country that demanded the resignation of the new technocrat cabinet that took office in May after inconclusive snap elections.

Parliamentary speaker Mihail Mikov called for a cancellation of Wednesday's session of the legislature and slammed the violence.
"Order must be guaranteed. Lawmakers cannot be turned into targets, their life and health cannot be put in danger," an outraged Mikov told state BNT television.
"There are lightly injured people and policemen and there have been arrests... No lawmakers have been hurt," Interior Minister Tsvetlin Yovchev said but refused to give more details.
Yovchev's office later assured in a statement that police had "enough forces and will guarantee the security of all people inside and around parliament - lawmakers, parliament staff, journalists, civilians."

Tensions subsided as the crowd dwindled to several hundred early Wednesday and police - now outnumbered the demonstrators - asked them over megaphones to disperse and re-open streets for traffic.
Up to 10,000 people have taken to Sofia streets every evening since June 14 when public discontent was sparked by the appointment of a media mogul as head of the country's powerful security agency.

The rallies later grew into wider anger against the cabinet and politicians in general seen by many as "corrupt" and too easily swayed by powerful "oligarchs".
But the protests had previously been peaceful, with people marching along Sofia's boulevards with their families, friends, toddlers, dogs and bikes.
"For the first time since the beginning of the protests we witnessed today tension and attempts for provocations. I appeal for restraint from any acts leading to an escalation of the tension and the breaking of public order," President Rosen Plevneliev urged in a statement Tuesday night.

He appealed for both protesters and police to refrain from violence and to make every effort to keep the protests peaceful.
Mass protests early this year saw eight people torch themselves, six of whom died, prompting the previous conservative government of premier Boyko Borisov to resign at the end of February.
"I insist that the government resign immediately. This is the only way to appease the people," Borisov said late Tuesday.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team


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