CCPR/C/121/D/2585/2015
2.3 After being released from prison, the authors were moved to a refugee camp in Sofia,
where they stayed for around three months. There they could not move freely due to the
overwhelming presence and fear of the police, because asylum seekers were mistreated and
felt insecure. Their child Y was allegedly beaten by police officers several times because he
was too noisy. On 14 October 2013, the authors were granted residence permits in Bulgaria,
which were valid until 21 October 2016 for L.B.H. and 31 October 2016 for M.A.S. On that
day, they were asked to leave the reception facilities. Since they were offered no assistance,
they struggled to find accommodation, work and education, and had no access to the
medical care they needed.
2.4
The authors managed to rent a room of 30 m2 in Sofia. They paid with the money
sent by family members living in Turkey and Iraq. They remained in that room for two
months. Fearing for the security of the family due to the wave of racism in Bulgaria, only
M.A.S. left the room from time to time to buy food or retrieve money.
2.5
A series of incidents made the authors feel unsafe in Bulgaria. In December 2013,
M.A.S witnessed the murder of an Iraqi person by a number of Bulgarian citizens in a park
in Sofia. He ran away, fearing for his life. On another occasion, while he was shopping for
the family, three Bulgarian men entered the shop and made him sing “Bulgaria is not the
place for me”. They told him to go back home, and they hit and kicked him. After these
incidents, fearing for their safety and due to the harsh living conditions in the absence of an
effective integration programme in Bulgaria, the authors left the country and travelled to
Denmark. The authors were driven to Denmark by a lorry driver contacted by L.B.H. They
presented their Bulgarian residence permits and were allowed to cross the border. After a
three-day journey, they arrived at an unknown town in Denmark, from where they travelled
to Aarhus.
2.6
The family applied for asylum in Aarhus the day they arrived, 6 January 2014.
M.A.S. declared that the reason for the request was his fear that he would be recalled as a
reservist by the Syrian military if he returned to the Syrian Arab Republic. In that
connection, he declared that before he left the country in July 2013, he had been recalled to
enrol but that he left the country instead. L.B.H. referred to her spouse’s grounds for
asylum. The authors also referred to the poor conditions in Bulgaria, to the impossibility of
finding a job, to the general discrimination against refugees in Bulgaria and to the threats
by unknown Bulgarians. On 6 and 7 August 2014, the Danish Immigration Service, in
separate decisions for each author and their children, decided not to grant them asylum as
Bulgaria was their first country of asylum and they had already been granted residence
permits, which were still valid. The Service considered that the authors’ statements about
the poor conditions in Bulgaria, including the impossibility of finding a job and
discrimination against refugees, were a question of socioeconomic conditions beyond the
scope of section 7 of the Aliens Act. The Service also indicated that the authors’ claim that
they had been threatened by Bulgarian individuals and also by the police during their arrest
and detention would not change its assessment because the authors could ask the Bulgarian
authorities for protection and also lodge a complaint. The Service noted that the authors had
never lodged a complaint with the Bulgarian authorities to either denounce threats by
private persons or the ill-treatment they allegedly suffered during their arrest and detention.
Finally, the Service attached great importance to the fact that the authors had not been
involved in any conflicts of such a nature that could put them at risk upon their return to
Bulgaria.
2.7
The authors submit that they have increased symptoms of post-traumatic stress
disorder, including insomnia, excessive negative thoughts, depressive and nervous
behaviour and an increased tendency to isolation. In particular, after arriving in Denmark,
their son Y received extensive psychological assistance because of the experiences in
Bulgaria and because he had witnessed the killing of friends by a bomb in his school in the
4
United Nations and the Red Cross”, had visited the applicant and others during their hunger strike and
given them an opportunity to talk about the treatment they had received in the Bulgarian prison.
The “media pressure” was mentioned by the authors only in their first communication, but with no
specific reference.
3