Dramatic video footage showing thousands of protestors opposed to Bulgaria’s COVID-19 restrictions breaking through police cordons and nearly storming the halls of the national parliament has surfaced and is circulating on social media.
Shortly after some 3,000 people gathered in front of the National Assembly last Wednesday in Sofia, tempers flared, and demonstrators—comprised heavily of supporters of the irredentist-nationalist Revival party—clashed with police and stormed towards the parliament, coming just several meters away from the main entrance, Bulgarian broadcaster Nova reports.
Although it appears that protesters could’ve easily made the final push that was required to breach the parliament’s front doors, the group ultimately decided to against it and instead urged lawmakers to come out and address their demands, which several Revival party MPs ended up doing.
“This is our workplace. We are MPs and we wanted to come out to our people from the main entrance. We are not afraid of the Bulgarian people. The aim is to drop these measures, to analyze them, and to impose only those that are not discriminatory,” said Revival party MP Elena Guncheva.
Much like the Capitol Hill protests which took place in Washington DC one year ago, protesters in Sofia erected gallows with a noose and were seen waving Confederate flags, Gadsden flags, and old US flags designs.
“I do not approve of the green certificates. I do not approve that the children are being stopped from attending classes. I do not see the logic of these things,” Asparuh Mitov, a 39-year-old engineer, told journalists from Reuters News at the beginning of the rally.
Kostadin Kostadinov, a lawmaker and the leader of the Revival party–which presently holds 13 seats in the parliament’s 240-seat chamber–addressed the crowd in a video message from his home where he’s currently in quarantine.
The protest comes just weeks after Kostadinov–while addressing his fellow lawmakers in the National Assembly just days before Christmas–threatened to have thousands of Bulgarians storm the parliament “if the government refuses to comply with requests to abolish the green pass and stop all vaccinations of children.”
“If you do not want to approach this with understanding, you will get a revolution,” he added.
