One could think it was just a bad coincidence when a group of 19 hunters met a group of refugees near the Turkish-Bulgarian border, near of the village of Evrenozovo (near Malko Tarnovo) last Saturday. After the hunters called the police, the group of 30 migrants was arrested by the Bulgarian border police. On the very same day, hundreds of right wing protesters walked on the streets of Sofia to support the police officer that shot the Afghani man.
Only a few days later Venko Kalinchev, the secretary of the hunting and fishing association Elen (Deer) in Kyustendil stated that there is a close working together with the Bulgarian Border Police and in the region of the village of Dolno Kobile (near Kjustendil), several groups were detected by the hunters. That statement was made not even one week after the fatal shooting of a young Afghan man in the Bulgarian forest.
Meanwhile volunteers at the Serbian city of Dimitrovgrad, close to the Serbian-Bulgarian border report about “multiple independent reports of police robbing, beating, and imprisoning refugees“ in Bulgaria. Due to the fence people walk long distances through the mountains and forests to reach Sofia and afterwards the borders of Serbia. At the moment about 200 people cross the Serbian border on a daily basis.