Originally posted by 
mrminiver at Интересное интерьвью на болгарском ТВ о завозе зверинца в Европу до 2050 года
mrminiver at Интересное интерьвью на болгарском ТВ о завозе зверинца в Европу до 2050 года
Panel TV in Bulgaria on illegal migrants and the future of Europe
Transcript (times based on the original program):
36:31 Georgi Bardarov, associate professor, Sofia University
36:09 Let us hear Mr. Bardarov too, who has been quietly listening to our discussion so far
36:14 from the height of his position as a man of letters, a demographer and so on…
36:18 how he sees all this process — an ordinary refugee crisis or a civilizational shift,
36:26 and what did we, Bulgarians, learn about ourselves from this crisis?
36:31 [Georgi Bardarov, associate professor, Sofia University]
My opinion is that we have been witnessing global changes since the beginning of the 21st century,
36:36 and this is not some kind of temporary phenomenon. What puzzles me are other processes:
36:40 that Europe turned out to be unprepared for this refugee wave,
36:43 given the data from UN and Eurostat that I used four years ago for my monograph —
36:47 “Immigration, conflicts and transformation of identities in the EU”.
36:50 The UN published a chart that predicted 1.5 million immigrants per year as far back as 2007,
36:59 1.2 million from Asia, 377,000 from Africa each year.
37:03 If it really happens every year, if they were to be as many as last year,
37:06 this means that by the middle of the century
37:09 there will be about 60 million new immigrants, and taken together with those already living
37:13 on the continent and their high birth rate, this makes about 100 million by the mid-21st century.
37:16 so we really are witnessing a global change.
37:20 It is not without precedent in world history —
37:24 It is enough to recall the Migration Period, when the ancient world was populated by barbarian tribes,
37:27 or the settling of the New World by Europeans during the 19th and 20th centuries.
37:31 So, there have been replacements of populations many times in different places in the world.
37:35 This really is a threat from the viewpoint of Europe and Christianity
37:38 but it is a process that has happened before and is subject to causal links —
37:43 the colonial system, the suppressed development of these territories…
37:46 I too am of the opinion that this migration pressure will continue,
37:50 not to mention the pressure from Africa that has not yet been fully unleashed —
37:53 you have been talking about just Asian countries so far. The situation in Africa —
37:58 I’ll give Uganda as an example — it had a population of 24 million in 2001
38:05 and is facing a drinking water shortage. The UN’s projected population growth for it is 302% by 2050.
38:11 I even contacted the demographic agency of the UN, because when I saw this figure
38:16 I decided this was impossible — 302%. They replied to me that the figure is correct — they will be
38:20 100 million by the middle of this century. —Uganda? From 24 to…? — 100, in just 50 years.
38:24 And they are facing water shortage now. What will happen then?!
38:27 So, these really are global… — The African route passes mainly through Italy?
38:31 Through Italy and through Spain. Gibraltar and Malta as well.
38:36 We will return to this topic in a little while.
38:39 Now we will see the “small story” of a postman who lives in Golyam Dervent village
38:44 near our southern border [with Turkey] at the very end of the European Union —
38:48 a village that in recent years has got used to the changing faces of the refugees.
45:56 Very interesting testimony from the people in a small village in the EU.
46:01 I’m curious to hear your comments. Mr. Bezlov?
46:05 [Tihomir Bezlov, political analyst and crime research expert, senior analyst at the Centre for the Study of Democracy]
— My thoughts are that, as you see, the ordinary person
46:11 is not hostile, he is well-meaning in many aspects.
46:17 The problem is this common cry “To Sofia”.
46:25 This is where the risk lies, because the incidents on the part of
46:31 both nationalists and migrants happened in Sofia.
46:37 This is the place where we can witness real conflicts, which, in the long run…
46:43 Well, we discussed the topic of the clash of civilizations —
46:48 That is, this Islamic demography, which in many respects…
46:56 what is happening now did not start in 2013, nor with the Syrian crisis in 2011.
47:03 This has been the policy of the Islamic states towards Europe probably since the end of the ’80s.
47:14 But the change, the visible change — and by the way, it happened in 2015 within one month
47:23 in Germany — from 65% approval, according to opinion polls, from “welcome”
47:29 to a sharp change in the opposite direction,
47:36 And the rise of the far right. So what happened in Germany, and not just Germany,
47:40 also in Sweden and all of Northern and Western Europe,
47:44 totally changed this situation and I think that, unfortunately…
47:47 you don’t expect conflicts at the places where civilizations clash,
47:51 and we are one of the places at the fault line.
47:54 Let’s hear Mr. Bardarov’s expectations as well. How will this affect Bulgarian society?
47:59 I think that, on the whole, Bulgarians are the most tolerant ethnic group on the Balkans,
48:04 based on the demographic and ethnographic surveys I’ve made. —Are they, still?
48:07 Still, yes. I agree entirely that ordinary people are not badly disposed,
48:12 the thing is, that with much higher migratory pressure and the escalation of
48:16 conflict situations, these attitudes will change.
48:32 Unfortunately I, too, expect conflicts and clashes.
48:36 In Europe they are many, unfortunately — what happened
48:39 in Cologne on New Year’s Eve is unprecedented,
48:42 so, from this perspective, the future is not promising.
48:46 Finally, a question to our security experts.
51:14 Do you have any idea what the tax for passing through Bulgaria is?
51:18 I can tell you what the Afghan migrants… — They often pay in
51:22 Istanbul or Kabul to be taken to Germany.
51:26 I talked to Afghan migrants in … — those several hundred euros the trafficker gets,
51:30 or pays to cross the country, is part of the “package”.
51:35 Yes, just for… — The refugees don’t pay at the border. —For your information, and for the viewers,
51:39 the migrants in the center of Belgrade, who are stuck there because of the blocked Hungarian border,
51:44 I talked to many of them, they are between 17 and 22 years old — not one was older:
51:51 I could not find anyone who was 25 or 27 years old.
51:54 Not a single woman, though I went about for two days.
51:58 They all said that they had paid $10,000 to get from Afghanistan
52:03 to Serbia, $2,000 of that in Bulgaria.
52:09 That’s the tax, more or less. There is yet another version, however —
52:13 those who can’t pay agree to smuggle drugs.
52:17 There were such attempts, but that creates other risks,
52:23 the traffickers themselves find it risky, the sentences are quite different;
52:27 that’s why I believe those attempts were discontinued.
52:31 The huge difference is that in one case you go to prison for fifteen years, or ten,
52:36 and in the other you can get away with a conditional discharge.
52:42 It turns out they carry things that look like drugs, so that they could be detained…
52:49 The risks of the future, according to a criminologist —
52:53 Well, for me it’s not the criminal, but the social risk that is much bigger.
53:00 Because if you have, for example, in Sweden, 300,000 people from a totally
53:04 different culture, such as the Islamic one,
53:09 which is, by the way, hostile to the state — the Islamic family does not want its
53:13 members, the children to cooperate with the state.
53:16 If you have a culture like that — 300,000 in a population of nine million,
53:22 given the birth trend that Mr Bardarov described —
53:27 Yes. I mean, the risk is enormous.
53:30 Luckily for us, all these people, as you see, all these people want to go to Germany.
53:37 The problem is when they get stuck.
53:40 We witnessed this, with their getting stuck, even before 2013.
53:44 We will discuss the social risk another time, probably.
53:47 Thank you very much for being here.
53:51 Thank you for not avoiding this conversation. That is all for today. In order not to be accused
53:54 of manipulating this extremely delicate topic for our society,
53:57 we are leaving it up to you to draw your conclusions.
54:00 See you next weekend.
Transcript (times based on the original program):
36:31 Georgi Bardarov, associate professor, Sofia University
36:09 Let us hear Mr. Bardarov too, who has been quietly listening to our discussion so far
36:14 from the height of his position as a man of letters, a demographer and so on…
36:18 how he sees all this process — an ordinary refugee crisis or a civilizational shift,
36:26 and what did we, Bulgarians, learn about ourselves from this crisis?
36:31 [Georgi Bardarov, associate professor, Sofia University]
My opinion is that we have been witnessing global changes since the beginning of the 21st century,
36:36 and this is not some kind of temporary phenomenon. What puzzles me are other processes:
36:40 that Europe turned out to be unprepared for this refugee wave,
36:43 given the data from UN and Eurostat that I used four years ago for my monograph —
36:47 “Immigration, conflicts and transformation of identities in the EU”.
36:50 The UN published a chart that predicted 1.5 million immigrants per year as far back as 2007,
36:59 1.2 million from Asia, 377,000 from Africa each year.
37:03 If it really happens every year, if they were to be as many as last year,
37:06 this means that by the middle of the century
37:09 there will be about 60 million new immigrants, and taken together with those already living
37:13 on the continent and their high birth rate, this makes about 100 million by the mid-21st century.
37:16 so we really are witnessing a global change.
37:20 It is not without precedent in world history —
37:24 It is enough to recall the Migration Period, when the ancient world was populated by barbarian tribes,
37:27 or the settling of the New World by Europeans during the 19th and 20th centuries.
37:31 So, there have been replacements of populations many times in different places in the world.
37:35 This really is a threat from the viewpoint of Europe and Christianity
37:38 but it is a process that has happened before and is subject to causal links —
37:43 the colonial system, the suppressed development of these territories…
37:46 I too am of the opinion that this migration pressure will continue,
37:50 not to mention the pressure from Africa that has not yet been fully unleashed —
37:53 you have been talking about just Asian countries so far. The situation in Africa —
37:58 I’ll give Uganda as an example — it had a population of 24 million in 2001
38:05 and is facing a drinking water shortage. The UN’s projected population growth for it is 302% by 2050.
38:11 I even contacted the demographic agency of the UN, because when I saw this figure
38:16 I decided this was impossible — 302%. They replied to me that the figure is correct — they will be
38:20 100 million by the middle of this century. —Uganda? From 24 to…? — 100, in just 50 years.
38:24 And they are facing water shortage now. What will happen then?!
38:27 So, these really are global… — The African route passes mainly through Italy?
38:31 Through Italy and through Spain. Gibraltar and Malta as well.
38:36 We will return to this topic in a little while.
38:39 Now we will see the “small story” of a postman who lives in Golyam Dervent village
38:44 near our southern border [with Turkey] at the very end of the European Union —
38:48 a village that in recent years has got used to the changing faces of the refugees.
45:56 Very interesting testimony from the people in a small village in the EU.
46:01 I’m curious to hear your comments. Mr. Bezlov?
46:05 [Tihomir Bezlov, political analyst and crime research expert, senior analyst at the Centre for the Study of Democracy]
— My thoughts are that, as you see, the ordinary person
46:11 is not hostile, he is well-meaning in many aspects.
46:17 The problem is this common cry “To Sofia”.
46:25 This is where the risk lies, because the incidents on the part of
46:31 both nationalists and migrants happened in Sofia.
46:37 This is the place where we can witness real conflicts, which, in the long run…
46:43 Well, we discussed the topic of the clash of civilizations —
46:48 That is, this Islamic demography, which in many respects…
46:56 what is happening now did not start in 2013, nor with the Syrian crisis in 2011.
47:03 This has been the policy of the Islamic states towards Europe probably since the end of the ’80s.
47:14 But the change, the visible change — and by the way, it happened in 2015 within one month
47:23 in Germany — from 65% approval, according to opinion polls, from “welcome”
47:29 to a sharp change in the opposite direction,
47:36 And the rise of the far right. So what happened in Germany, and not just Germany,
47:40 also in Sweden and all of Northern and Western Europe,
47:44 totally changed this situation and I think that, unfortunately…
47:47 you don’t expect conflicts at the places where civilizations clash,
47:51 and we are one of the places at the fault line.
47:54 Let’s hear Mr. Bardarov’s expectations as well. How will this affect Bulgarian society?
47:59 I think that, on the whole, Bulgarians are the most tolerant ethnic group on the Balkans,
48:04 based on the demographic and ethnographic surveys I’ve made. —Are they, still?
48:07 Still, yes. I agree entirely that ordinary people are not badly disposed,
48:12 the thing is, that with much higher migratory pressure and the escalation of
48:16 conflict situations, these attitudes will change.
48:32 Unfortunately I, too, expect conflicts and clashes.
48:36 In Europe they are many, unfortunately — what happened
48:39 in Cologne on New Year’s Eve is unprecedented,
48:42 so, from this perspective, the future is not promising.
48:46 Finally, a question to our security experts.
51:14 Do you have any idea what the tax for passing through Bulgaria is?
51:18 I can tell you what the Afghan migrants… — They often pay in
51:22 Istanbul or Kabul to be taken to Germany.
51:26 I talked to Afghan migrants in … — those several hundred euros the trafficker gets,
51:30 or pays to cross the country, is part of the “package”.
51:35 Yes, just for… — The refugees don’t pay at the border. —For your information, and for the viewers,
51:39 the migrants in the center of Belgrade, who are stuck there because of the blocked Hungarian border,
51:44 I talked to many of them, they are between 17 and 22 years old — not one was older:
51:51 I could not find anyone who was 25 or 27 years old.
51:54 Not a single woman, though I went about for two days.
51:58 They all said that they had paid $10,000 to get from Afghanistan
52:03 to Serbia, $2,000 of that in Bulgaria.
52:09 That’s the tax, more or less. There is yet another version, however —
52:13 those who can’t pay agree to smuggle drugs.
52:17 There were such attempts, but that creates other risks,
52:23 the traffickers themselves find it risky, the sentences are quite different;
52:27 that’s why I believe those attempts were discontinued.
52:31 The huge difference is that in one case you go to prison for fifteen years, or ten,
52:36 and in the other you can get away with a conditional discharge.
52:42 It turns out they carry things that look like drugs, so that they could be detained…
52:49 The risks of the future, according to a criminologist —
52:53 Well, for me it’s not the criminal, but the social risk that is much bigger.
53:00 Because if you have, for example, in Sweden, 300,000 people from a totally
53:04 different culture, such as the Islamic one,
53:09 which is, by the way, hostile to the state — the Islamic family does not want its
53:13 members, the children to cooperate with the state.
53:16 If you have a culture like that — 300,000 in a population of nine million,
53:22 given the birth trend that Mr Bardarov described —
53:27 Yes. I mean, the risk is enormous.
53:30 Luckily for us, all these people, as you see, all these people want to go to Germany.
53:37 The problem is when they get stuck.
53:40 We witnessed this, with their getting stuck, even before 2013.
53:44 We will discuss the social risk another time, probably.
53:47 Thank you very much for being here.
53:51 Thank you for not avoiding this conversation. That is all for today. In order not to be accused
53:54 of manipulating this extremely delicate topic for our society,
53:57 we are leaving it up to you to draw your conclusions.
54:00 See you next weekend.
