{"id":20392,"date":"2020-09-03T11:28:04","date_gmt":"2020-09-03T08:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/?p=20392"},"modified":"2020-09-03T11:28:04","modified_gmt":"2020-09-03T08:28:04","slug":"aej-bulgaria-condemns-police-violence-against-bulgarian-journalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/aej-bulgaria-condemns-police-violence-against-bulgarian-journalist\/","title":{"rendered":"AEJ-Bulgaria Condemns Police Violence Against Bulgarian Journalist\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Association of European Journalists in Bulgaria condemns attack by police on a Bulgarian journalist covering the anti-government protests on Wednesday in Sofia.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dimiter Kenarov, a freelance journalist and writer, was briefly detained and beaten up by police late in the evening when tensions between protesters and police escalated.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He said that while he identified as a reporter multiple times, police officers dragged him across the pavement and handcuffed him. Moreover, he was wearing a mask marked \u201c<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">PRESS<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d and he showed the police his press card. Officers ignored his pleas that he could not breathe and brutally kicked him in the head.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kenarov was kept handcuffed for hours before being taken to a police station. He was released around 4:30 am on Thursday. The journalist suffered injuries to his face and head.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At least one other journalist has been a victim of police violence. Officers hit Nikolay Doychinov, Sofia-based photojournalist for Agence France-Presse, in the back with batons and damaged his camera.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Earlier on Wednesday several journalists and television crews were pepper sprayed when clashes\u00a0 between riot police and protesters broke out. Nikolay Minkov, a reporter at Bulgarian National Television, the public broadcaster, fainted in the morning after he had been gassed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Police violence against journalists documenting protests in the country is unacceptable. We call on authorities not to target journalists who are covering the protest and ensure that they could fulfil their <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">professional duties<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> freely and safely. The Association of European Journalists in Bulgaria will continue to monitor excessive use of force by the police during the demonstrations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Association of European Journalists in Bulgaria condemns attack by police on a Bulgarian journalist covering the anti-government protests on Wednesday in Sofia. Dimiter Kenarov, a freelance journalist and writer, was briefly detained and beaten up by police late in the evening when tensions between protesters and police escalated.\u00a0 He said that while he identified [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27188,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,962],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-featured","category-from-aej-bulgaria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}