In Bulgaria, A Loophole In The Law Is Killing Women
AND THE FUCKING, CHRISTOFASCIST, THEOCRATIC WAR ON WOMEN CONTINUES APACE)
(A very difficult, anger-making read)
In Bulgaria, A Loophole In The Law Is Killing Women
April 20, 2023 15:08 GMT
By Damyana Veleva
Alison Mutler
Women hug each other during a march for gender equality and against violence toward women, on International Women's Day, in Sofia, on March 8, 2019.
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SOFIA -- On March 9, Kristina Blagoeva, a 32-year-old woman from Bulgaria's capital, contacted the Animus Association, an NGO that offers counseling and support to victims of domestic violence. She told the organization that the previous day the man she was having a relationship with had threatened to kill her. Less than a month later, her body was found in the trunk of a car, with two bullets in her chest. On April 7, her partner, Kaloyan Kaymakchiyski, was charged with her murder. The prosecutor's office said the most likely motive was that Blagoeva had ended the relationship.
The case has reignited a debate in Bulgaria about the country's domestic violence law, which rights activists and legal experts say needs modernizing to better protect women and has resulted in the deaths of dozens of women. But despite efforts to change the law, conservative factions in parliament have blocked any changes that would bring EU member Bulgaria in line with European norms, ************citing "gender ideology" and "traditional Christian values."********
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Protesters hold banners during a demonstration against domestic violence on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, in Sofia on November 25, 2021.
Yulia Andonova from Bulgaria's PULSE Foundation, which supports victims of domestic violence, says the current domestic violence law "isn't working" and is an "outdated" understanding of human relationships that does not correspond to current realities. The existing law considers domestic violence to be "any act of physical, sexual, mental, emotional, or economic violence…committed against persons who are related, who are or have been in a family relationship or in a de facto marital partnership." That definition is not expansive enough, say those calling on lawmakers to amend the law. "Think about how many people there are in such a situation. They have boyfriends but do not live together, whether because they are young and still live with their parents, or they are divorced and have children and an independent lifestyle, or they just live separately, work a lot, and spend only the weekend together," Andonova says.
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Former Justice Minister Nadezhda Yordanova from the Democratic Bulgaria electoral alliance, a member of Petkov's coalition government, was among the submitters of the bill in the parliament. She declined to comment to RFE/RL on which of the then coalition partners were opposed to the law being amended. She did confirm, however, that opponents of the proposal said the possible inclusion of same-sex couples in the legislation was an issue but not the only one. "The main problem was how to divide the genuinely long-term relationships from those that are short-term, random, and do not involve a lasting commitment," Yordanova told RFE/RL's Bulgarian Service.
In the end, parliament never passed the bill. In January, invoking "traditional Christian values" and "gender ideology," lawmakers from the Bulgarian Socialist Party, the center-right GERB party, the nationalist Bulgarian Rise party, and the far-right Revival party rejected the planned changes to the legislation. Yordanova told RFE/RL that Democratic Bulgaria will attempt again in the future to have the law amended in parliament, with a new approach being worked on to satisfy "conservative" factions of society.
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https://www.rferl.org/a/bulgaria-loophole-law-women-domestic-violence/32372477.html