Written by Mariya Cheresheva
Maria Dimitrova, an editor-in-chief of Zovnews, a local newspaper in Vratza, northwest of Bulgaria, was attending a family gathering at the end of October when she started receiving threats over the phone and on Facebook.
The messages came from a well-known figure from the Vratza underground who threatened the journalist with sexual abuse and warned that she would “suffer in some way”.
Her publisher, Georgi Ezekiev, also received threats. “Then we got a warning about preparations for the murder of our publisher. I was shocked,” Dimitrova told BIRN.
A few months earlier, she had helped the Bulgarian investigative website Bivol with a story that had revealed an organized criminal group active in Vratza involved in racketeering, drug trafficking and a wide range of other offences.
Shortly after the investigation was published, Dimitrova’s informant, the grandson of a woman arrested in Switzerland for trafficking cocaine, was severely beaten.
The journalist approached the authorities about the threats made to her and her publisher, but said the case remained neglected until it gained broader publicity later in November.
In spite of the silence of the Bulgarian authorities, local and international media groups raised an alert about the pressure Zov news had experienced as a result of its work.
“We are very worried about the threats to the website publisher Georgi Ezekiev and one of his reporters, who have filed a complaint that was ignored by the police,” Pauline Adès-Mével, the head of Reporters without Borders EU-Balkans desk, said in a statement on November 24
She urged Bulgaria’s authorities to take such threats and attacks more seriously and “do everything possible to protect the targets”.
The Association of European Journalists, AEJ, a pan-European press freedom organization, also took action to defend the media outlet.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
