BTA

Head of State: Manipulation of Historical Facts Inevitably Leads to Dead End

Attending a ceremony marking the 120th anniversary of the outbreak of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising at the Petrova Niva historic area Saturday, President Rumen Radev said that any manipulation of historical facts and reshaping of Bulgarian holidays and traditions inevitably leads to a dead end. “The descendants of the rebels who today fill Petrova Niva are the truest measure of patriotism and a guarantor against any attempt to replace our history. I believe that the sense of freedom, justice, and dignity, which the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie revolutionaries of 1903 carried, lives in all Bulgarians today”, Radev added.

Radev stressed that modern Bulgarians are indebted to their ancestors who had left their bones and had paid with their blood for Bulgarian freedom and independence.

The ceremony at Petrova Niva was held under the auspices of Radev. The event was attended by politicians, public figures, as well as by hundreds of citizens.

The Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising was a mass revolt of the Macedonian and Thracian Bulgarians against the Ottoman rule, organized by the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Organization in 1903. The uprising broke out on August 2, 1903, for the liberation of the Bulgarian population in Macedonia and Eastern Thrace, which after Bulgaria’s liberation in 1878 remained within the territories of the Ottoman Empire under the Berlin Treaty.