With her eyes opened: a letter from Bulgaria

By Doncheva, 14 September 1999

A Letter to the Serbian “Democratic Opposition”

I was an activist in the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) until June 1993. UDF is the mirror image of the Serbian Alliance for Change (the United Democratic Opposition).

The Bulgarian Union of Democratic Forces or UDF received a lot of money in 1990 cars, computers, luxurious placards (transported from abroad in big trucks) for the 1990 elections and the next ones until the consolidation of the UDF in power. We think that a certain amount of money continues to flow, but now it is directed only to the UDF officials presently in power. You all know what the Bulgarian government of the UDF did during the US war against neighbouring Yugoslavia. I will remind those who might happen not to know or who have forgotten:

It provided FULL SUPPORT for the USA.

It gave the US and NATO all the asked-for corridors—in the air and on the ground. (There is talk that southern Serbia has been demolished by US planes flying over Bulgaria from a US Turkish base.)

For the first time since the end of the 500 year Turkish Yoke last century Turkish ground force passed through Bulgaria.

Here's an easy question: “From whence does money for the UDF (and now for UDF leaders) mainly come?” You get one guess.

So. We, here in Bulgaria, have had US-style democracy since 1989. For ten years already.

MY TEN MOST AWFUL YEARS

What happened during that most awful period of my life on earth?

Through the ardent UDF leaders in power, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are successfully devouring Bulgarian industry, destroying the social fabric and dismantling national boundaries. (Our national boundaries, mind you, never those of the US or Germany.)

Three ways they devour Bulgarian industry:

• privatizing the Bulgarian plants and factories and liquidating them afterwards;
• directly liquidating them;
• selling them for twopenny-halfpenny to powerful foreign corporations. For instance, the Copper Metallurgical plant near the town of Pirdop producing gold and platinum as well as electrolytic copper was sold in 1997 to Union Miniere, Belgium for next to nothing.

Conclusion: Bulgarian industry and infrastructure (the roads for instance) have been most successfully demolished and this WITHOUT bombing! in less than ten years. All this, just from doing what the Serbian opposition is saying the Serbs should do.

(A popular joke here during the US war on Yugoslavia: two Turkish pilots, flying over Bulgaria, are looking down at the Bulgarian landscape. One of them says: “I wonder? Have we dropped bombs here?” “Don’t be silly,” answers the other. “It is Bulgaria! They look like that without bombing.”)

Side effects:

• hordes of unemployed, as you can well imagine.
• Beggars in the streets.
• Children dying in the street from drugs and malnutrition.
• Old people digging in the garbage containers for some rag or mouldy piece of bread.

In 1989 my friend mother's pensions had been 105 leva. Now it is 46 leva at $1 many dollars that 75 year old woman receives per month.

Yesterday my brother-in-law told me he had seen the former headmistress of his son's school to dig in a garbage can?

The infant death rate has increased.

The birth death rate has increased. The reasons in most of the cases: mothers suffering of shock and malnutrition.

The death rate generally has increased.

Young people refuse to marry and have children.

Will there be a Bulgarian nation in the 21 century? What have the big US think-tanks planned for Bulgaria? The answer is getting clearer with every year.

EATING AWAY SOCIAL PROGRAMMES

Before 1989 Bulgaria was a SOCIAL state: Free medical care, FREE education, social help and programmes for the mothers and the elderly. According to the old (totalitarian) pension law people retired at 55 years of age for the women and 60 years of age for the men.

According to the new (U.S-style democratic) pension law and the adopted new system there will not be any retired people here.

The new system demands gathering of 90 points for the women age plus number of years in service and 95 points for the men. The small number of people about 55 still at work will manage to retire at about 58 years of age (for the women) and 63 (for the men).

But what about the people at 35-40-45 years of age, some of them unemployed for years already?

How will they gather the number of years in service, necessary for retirement?

Nobody needs them, nobody wants them at work, nobody offers work to them. When you open the newspapers at the pages with job offers you see the repeated demand for age of 30 for the eventual applicants. Even if the offer is for cnstruction workers or scrub women.

So, if you are under 30, you have some chances to slave for 12 hours for next to nothing for a newly hatched businessman.

All the others are expendable and the only open exit for them is the crematorium. Amen.

And the IMF and WB aim will be achieved: less population, less pensioners, less children?And THEY (the Global Super Rich?) will get closer to their global aim of providing an earth inhabited only by the Golden Billionaires (after the messy job of clearing away the redundant/unwanted six billion?)

WHAT ABOUT EDUCATION?

Now the number of children that do not go to school increases with every year. Only comparatively well-to-do parents or parents who still have some saved money can fulfill their children's desire for a higher education.

HEALTH?

People have turned to “old wives'” ways of healing.

Going to the dentist is looked upon as a kind of a luxury.

There are talks for a drastic raising of all the medicine prices here with 60-70%—from September 1st 99.

The chasm between the handful of rich and the great majority of poor people is disastrously deepening with every day.

By the way, the last remnants of privileges will be taken away after the 1st of January 2000.

I have in mind the lower prices for train tickets for students, mothers with children and the elderly.

IMF DEMANDS: NO MORE SUBSIDIZED TRAVEL!

Taking away these special, lower fares was one of the INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND (IMF) conditions for the latest loan, agreed to willingly by the UDF leaders now in power.

Note that the UDF is short for Union of Democratic Forces, whose program is the mirror image of the Serbian Alliance for change or United Democratic Opposition.

Note that the names are almost the same, aren’t they?

Bad. Proof of very poor imagination on the part of the money-givers.

They should insist on variety in names.

WHAT TAKING AWAY TRAVEL PRIVILEGE REALLY MEANS

It means additional separation of people, forcing them to stay either in the towns, where they will die from hunger, or in the villages with the same result. Because most of the still active pensioners presently add to meager family and personal income through some occasional jobs in the towns or by providing vegetables and fruit for the winter in their father's village gardens. It is possible and worth while NOW when they are travelling by train at half the price. After January 1 it will be senseless.

So the death rate will increase one of the IMF's apparent goals will be successfully realized and the servile UDF leaders will be correspondingly rewarded.

I wonder. How much does it pay to destroy one's own people under the sweetened slogans of “democracy” (what democracy?) and joining the “Western civilization” (what civilization are we speaking of?) Does it pay really well?

Do you, the so-called opposition in Serbia REALLY think that the best road for you is joining THAT “civilization”? What will be the bitter fruit later of your efforts now? Cheap labour for the US and western corporations and the humiliating agony of a slow torturous death through wretched poverty for your people.

Look back into your history a history of tough people able to find solution of their OWN, to overcome obstacles with their OWN resources We saw what our contemporary “Western civilization” actually stands for during those awful 79 days.When they bombed a sovereign EUROPEAN country they defined themselves.

Since Yugoslavian capitulation we all are DAILY witnesses what western civilization stands for in Kosovo.

Everybody knows now that:

1) The US and Europe are against ethnic cleansing of the Albanians by the Serbs.

2) But they are FOR the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs by the Albanians. What has happened to the sugared talk about Human Rights? Ah, sorry, I have forgotten. Serbs are not Human. (With the exception of those that take the U.S. and NATO countries' money to betray their people and their country!)

You in the opposition, do you really want to lick the soles of those cruel greedy monsters?

OPENING OUR BORDERS, MAKING US AN ‘OPEN SOCIETY’

…as expounded by George Soros, the international financier of newspapers, radio stations, NGOs and political parties that facilitate the destruction of previously viable nations. That philanthropist of the “open society.” We have learned the hard way what those pretty slogans about “opening the borders” mean.

It means KILLING the part of Bulgarian industry that is still managing to stay alive and thereby give bread to a certain number of people.

It means that lots of LOW QUALITY I use the phrase deliberately: LOW QUALITY food products and other goods (socks for instance) flow freely through the “open(ed) borders” into Bulgaria, undermining the efforts of local producers.

We have been perhaps one of the biggest consumers of the notorious Belgian dioxin chickens. Result: some of the local producers have gone bankrupt and sunk into dismal poverty. Some of the salami and sausage producers have had the same fate. The same holds true for producers of veal and veal products.

I have a cousin who has a small farm four cows. He hasn’t been able to sell his calves for two successive years. Two of the cows have already died. He is smashed. The veal-buying firms explain that they prefer to work with the frozen meat imported at low prices ready to be stuffed and turned into salami and sausages. Never mind the salami's and sausages' quality…

“Fasan”, the sock and stocking factory in the Danube town of Rouse, is slowly sinking down (maybe it has already gone bankrupt and hundreds are in the streets). Because of the Turkish socks, flooding the Bulgarian market and sold at 0.5 leva a pair. The “Fasan” socks are sold at about 1 leva ($1 @ 87 leva).

They cannot sell them at a lower price—they will go bankrupt.

They cannot sell them at the only possible-for-them price and they have gone bankrupt. Amen. Rest in peace.

So much for “open borders.” So much for Mr. Soros' “Open Society”. I hope you have now a clearer picture of what U.S.-type democracy has brought Bulgaria and its people. Of the real, practical meaning of the syrupy phrases.

WHAT BREAKS MY HEART

I personally live in abject misery. I pay my Internet fee at the expense of great limitations in food, forgoing other needs as well. I do not know how long I will be able to support it.

But it is the sight of the old men and women, digging into the rubbish containers that is breaking my heart.

And the old people begging in the streets? the outreached trembling hands?the tears of pain and humiliation in the eyes?They make me cry. Because, you see, street beggars might be a familiar part of the New York scenery. But it is a new and very shocking sight for us here, and our hearts are bleeding.

PRICES—BEFORE U.S. DEMOCRACY AND AFTER

I enclose a comparing table of some prices in 1989 and 1999 from “Appeal”, the monthly newspaper of our activist group.

Prices in leva 1989 and 1999 ($1 @87 leva as of 8/27/99)

Bread, 1 kg (white flour)	0,48	0,63
Bread, 1 kg (wholemeal)	0,15	0,45
Salami 1 kg	2,80	3,60
Yogurt	0,22	0,32-0,75
Tram ticket (Sofia)	0,06	0,25
Steam Heating, average	14,0	80,00–150,00
El. energy,1 kwh:day/night	0,042/0,022	0,08/0,04
Luxury lady shoes	30–40	100
Suit, average price	100	300
Lighter, ordinary	0,20	4,00
Books	1–2	6–10
Cinema ticket	0,40–0,80	4–8
Salary, average	200	150
Pension, average	100	50

And so on and on and on ?

ALL GENOCIDES ARE NOT EQUAL IN THEIR EYES

The USA started bombing Yugoslavia officially because of the still unproven genocide on the poor Albanians by the Serbs, the Demons.

Meanwhile they are carrying out invisible at first sight but very effective genocide on my people in Bulgaria. As in all the countries in the deadly grip of the US type of democracy and its envoys, the INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND and THE WORLD BANK.

What are the Serbs thinking?

I am truly amazed at some Serbian people's reactions lately. I have never looked upon them as being a nation of suicides.

What are they striving for? What do they want? The dismal, hopeless life of their Bulgarian neighbours?

Do they REALLY want to see their old people dig in the garbage cans?

Do they REALLY want to stop their children from going to school because of lack of money for shoes and textbooks?

Do they REALLY want to slave for the American or German corporations 12 hours per day for miserable pay? Because think: what is the greatest attraction for a foreign corporation in a devastated country like Yugoslavia? The cheap labour! That is it! The so called Sweatshops.

I cannot believe my eyes and ears! AFTER 78 or 79 DAYS OF AMERICAN BOMBS at that! Over the bodies of killed Serb children by the AMERICAN bombs!

It is simply UNBELIEVABLE!

And after the good example of what the US kind of “democracy” has done to Bulgaria, the Yugoslavian neighbour.

I do not want to vindicate myself for having been an activist of the UDF till 1993. I only would like to point out that at that time we all believed the totalitarian state [the former, Communist Bulgaria] was simply lying about the USA. That all the warnings about the USA were simply propaganda lies. We had not heard anything about the IMF or the WB or the transnational corporations and their expansion policy in 1990. We fell for the seductive talk about democracy and openness and the rest. But it is impossible to say the same for the so-called Serb Opposition.

Especially after the U.S. war on THEIR country!

They, the Serb Opposition, are even not ashamed of the $100 million of US “help”, arrogantly announced in the face of the whole world! [This refers to US aid openly given to help the opposition in Serbia]

Don’t you, all the Serbs that are hanging from the lips of that US or German flunky, [Alliance for Change leader] Djindnic, feel humiliated at having chosen to work for the US and West European interests against your own people?

When the blood of the Serbian children is still fresh on the money they are giving you?!

SHAME, SHAME ON YOU!

Desanka Maksimovic has a poem:

My forebears and fellow-villagers
Have never been traitors.
They have gone since times immemorial
Where Justice has called them. She is lucky she is not alive today.

WHAT IS AT ISSUE?

The issue is not Milosevic. US and the “Western civilizations” are reaching greedily for your country. Their geopolitical interests and their corporations demand it: they need the land and what resources you have.

Doncheva,
Sofia, Bulgaria
The Balkans