Why did the chicken move to the other side of the road? It was appalled to hear of the disastrous violation of poultry rights on his native side of the road.

I first left Bulgaria with my family and moved to Ukraine at the age of 15. I then graduated from high-school and relocated to the UK, to do my university degree there. I've always said that moving is temporary, that I love my country and that I will always love Sophia, my home city. To this day, this is the case, when I go back there, it is home. But I no longer see the people there as any group of people I want to identify with. Never mind the "chalga", never mind that education has gone down the drain and people my age can't write a single grammatically correct sentence. Never mind that they don't care about ecology, smoke like chimneys next to their infants, that their priorities in life are the same as the priorities of hip-hop artists: golden chains around their neck, the bitches around their cock and money to show off their status.

There seem to be а handful of people who understand the meaning of human rights. We're notoriously bad at understanding that just because someone is different, it doesn't mean they are worse than us.

This is clearly proven to be the case this time every year, when the talk of LGBT (gay) pride happens. The media enjoy the sensationalism and the average Bulgarian seems to enjoy the idea of beating up a fag or two. We know that most of  'em are just attention-seekers, and the real queers are mentally ill. A real man would never take it in the ass. What else is new?  

Is only gets more disturbing when we talk about people with disabilities or mental health issues. While fags are annoying, we at least see them. Disabilities and mental illnesses equal social death, it seems to be. No. In fact, having a mental disability equals real death. [the article is in Bulgarian but I think it's worth passing it through Google Translate] A 15 year old girl was in a foster home, started throwing up, lost weight and by the time anyone bothered to call a doctor, it was too late, she died. The doctors, hell, God himself couldn't have saved her: in the month before her death she had swallowed about 5 kg of garbage. In her stomach doctors found 25 insoles, 8 rags, 3 foam sponges, 6 socks, 3 pieces of paper and 3 stones (3-4 cm in diameter). The first problem is that this isn't the first time where monstrous things have happened to children in foster homes. The second problem is that the child was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Highly likely, given what the attitude seems to be towards the disabled, that doctors would have been called much earlier if it wasn't considered that having a mental illness means that you're lower quality person.

There are bad people everywhere. Here we're talking about something else- a culture which reinforces the belief that if you're not a rich, white man who has traded any chance for intellect for a Mercedes, then you're a second class citizen. No, you're a woman. Then if you're not that, then you are, in decreasing order of importance, a gypsy, a muslim, a negro, a fag, a tranny. I don't think you're even on the hate-radar if you have a mental disability. The girl died 6 years ago, it has been decided by court that it was nobody's fault. A friend of mine put it succinctly: "today the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee is suing Bulgaria. And I hope they win."