Bulgarian security removed concertgoers waving Ukrainian flags at the concert of Russian rock group DDT and got aggressive in the process, claimed Russian opposition activist Yevgeni Chupov, who was granted refugee status in Bulgaria in 2021.
Things got quite physical with a young girl at the concert, Chupov claimed on social media, noting that security injured a girl whom they forcibly removed from the concert hall.
“On January 7, at the DDT concert in the National Palace of Culture, a girl unfurled the Ukrainian flag. After that, two guards grabbed her by the arms and took her out of the hall,” Chupov wrote on social media.
But the private company in charge of security denies any physical aggression, claiming that the organiser, Ukrainian company U-concert, demanded that Russian and Ukrainian flags be taken down to prevent altercations between both groups in the audience.
“The more she (the injured girl) screamed, the more one of the guards twisted her arm,” Chupov, who was also taken out by security for waving the security flag, wrote
“When the security guards took me out of the concert hall for the first time, after a long dialogue, I returned to the concert without any hindrance. After the concert, a group of our activists requested a meeting with the head of the security company and the organisers to apologise to the injured girl. The security guards first began to speak to me aggressively, and then they pushed me into the street,” Chupov told Euractiv’s partner Dnevnik.
While official information about the concert did not mention the ban on Ukrainian or any other flags, organisers announced that the band had banned waving Ukrainian flags following the incident.
BG Security, which was responsible for all security, said that at the exit after the concert, a group of people ‘demanded an explanation from the security guards as to why someone was preventing them from living a democratic life’.
The company also admitted that one of their staff lost his temper and showed the middle finger, which the company said was unacceptable and promised to take the necessary action.
(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)
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Source: euractiv.com
