The new report by Amnesty International "Missing the point: Lack of adequate investigation of hate crimes in Bulgaria" documents the severe impact of hate crimes on victims and highlights how the authorities’ failure to tackle entrenched prejudice against asylum seekers, migrants, Muslims and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is fueling further violence and discrimination.

Racist and xenophobic hate crimes

Legislation exists in Bulgaria to prosecute hate crimes linked to racism and xenophobia, but authorities consistently fail to identify and adequately investigate them. Attacks against migrants and asylum seekers spiked in 2013, according to the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee and other local organizations.

For certain crimes, such as murder or physical assault, a racist or xenophobic motive constitutes an aggravating factor and attracts an additional penalty, yet authorities often treat these crimes as motivated by hooliganism, which prosecutors told Amnesty International is easier to demonstrate.

Nazir, an asylum seeker from Iraq, was attacked by a group of eight or nine people wearing brass knuckles in September 2013. He was hospitalized for nine days and needed two operations. Police failed to come to the hospital to take Nazir’s statement and refused to register his complaint afterward. Nazir recounted how the police "told me to go away or they would send me back to Iraq." When questioned by Amnesty International, the Ministry of the Interior said two police officers were sanctioned for lack of due diligence in this case after an internal review, but it is currently unclear if an investigation into the attack against Nazir has been launched.

Homophobic and transphobic hate crimes

There is no legislation in Bulgaria to prosecute homophobic hate crimes, which are currently investigated and prosecuted simply as hooligan acts.

Mihail Stoyanov, a 25-year-old student, was brutally killed in a park in Sofia in 2008 because he was perceived to be gay. During the investigation, a man testified that the two suspects were part of a group intending to "cleanse" the park of gays. However, because of gaps in the law, in August 2013, the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office pressed charges for murder motivated by hooliganism. The prosecutor in that case told Amnesty International, "The law is limited and that’s why I could not take into account the homophobic motive in the indictment."

Barriers to justice for victims

A majority of victims of hate crimes do not report them to the authorities in the first place. Some say it is because they don’t believe the police will adequately respond to their case, or even because they fear further discrimination from the police.

According to a recent European Union survey, 86 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Bulgaria who had experienced violence or threats of violence did not report these incidents to the police. About a third of those who didn’t file a report cited fear of homophobic or transphobic reactions from the Bulgarian police as the reason for their reluctance to lodge complaints.

"Bulgarian authorities must investigate, acknowledge and publicly condemn hate crimes to prevent such crimes in future and to challenge the deeply entrenched prejudices that exist in Bulgarian society," concluded Marco Perolini, Amnesty International’s researcher on discrimination in Europe.