One hundred public figures have signed a joint statement against closing the State Security files commission and asked the government to withdraw the bill. They said so at a news conference at the BTA National Press Club.
The signatories include journalists, lawyers, historians and representatives of non-governmental groups. The statement will go to the prime minister.
The cabinet proposes closing the commission by the end of the year and moving its work to the State Agency "Archives". The body's full name is the Commission for Disclosing the Documents and Announcing Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to State Security and the Intelligence Services of the Bulgarian People's Army.
The bill is now open for public consultation. The signatories want it stopped before it reaches parliament, and they want the executive to end its attacks on the independent state body.
Martin Dimitrov, an MP from Democratic Bulgaria, said the change is presented as a reform but is simply a closure and a heavy blow to free speech and transparency. He said the bill's explanatory notes give not one concrete example of savings and no calculation of how much would be saved. The administration, the buildings and the costs stay, he said. Only the body that controls the release of the files changes.
Dimitrov noted that the 2006 law was passed with broad political consensus. Parliament then set up an independent collective body in which no political force has a majority. It would now be replaced by one person, the head of the State Agency "Archives", whom the prime minister appoints and dismisses. The MP warned that the release of the files could be blocked because the transition rules are unclear and there is no guarantee of uninterrupted access to the archive.
"The truth about the totalitarian past does not belong to the government. It does not belong to any party. It belongs to Bulgarian citizens," Dimitrov said.
Lawyer Alexander Kashumov said the Constitutional Court ruled as early as 1997 that an executive body cannot be in charge of opening these documents. For that reason, he said, the cabinet's proposal is unconstitutional. In the case of Anchev v Bulgaria, the European Court of Human Rights found that the law fully meets the standards of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The first law on the files dates from 1997. After changes in 2002, there was a legal vacuum until 2006.
The commission's archive holds more than 14,600 linear metres of documents and more than 2.5m registration cards. In 18 to 19 years, it has made 2,836 decisions, checked 540,000 people, identified 22,000 and announced 18,000. Citizens and researchers have filed 34,000 requests.
Ekaterina Boncheva, a longtime member of the commission, said many of those who applied work with the archive and the films in it. Many books have come out, she said, and people have learned things that were hidden from them until the law was passed. She said there is now an attempt to hide a past that is repeating itself today.
Assoc Prof Georgi Lozanov called the closure a symptom of propaganda winning over memory. He thinks the next step will be a foreign agents law and an attempt to suggest that the Soviet Union was better than the EU. Lozanov said State Security was part of a parallel power that was legal under communism, and the same model is repeating today through the power groups.
"Perhaps it is enough to pull the files of the murdered crime bosses to make the links between State Security and the whole system clear," Lozanov said.