Bulgaria Mourns Journalist’s Death

Guestbook at the funeral of Viktoria Marinova.

Hundreds of mourners gathered at the Sveta Troitsa Cathedral in Ruse, Bulgaria, to pay their final respects to Viktoria Marinova, a murdered anti-corruption journalist, on October 12.  Marinova’s body was found on October 6 in a park, her keys, mobile phone, and some of her clothing missing. Using DNA evidence, Bulgarian officials arrested the suspect, 20-year-old Severin Krasimirov, three days after the murder.

Ruse regional prosecutor Georgy Georgiev announced that the cause of death was blows to the head and suffocation. Marinova was also raped prior to the killing.

During questioning in the Stade District Court in Germany, where the suspect was found, Krasimirov partially confessed to the crime, admitting that he hit a woman in the face during an altercation while under the strong influence of alcohol and drugs. He denies raping or robbing this woman, and also claims that he had not known her previously.

This case, which has drawn international outrage due in part to the brutal nature of the killing, and also to her work in the EU as a journalist, attracted citizens from around Bulgaria to the funeral. Marinova was a former presenter for popular Bulgarian television channel TVN.

She had recently begun a new show, Detector, which reported on political investigations. In the only segment aired before her death, Marinova discussed the work of two journalists in exposing the misuse of public EU funds by a group of corporations in Bulgaria. The report claimed that 30 to 40 percent of these funds went to corruption and bribery.

“Again a courageous journalist falls in the fight for truth and against corruption,” Vice President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans said in response to the killing. Bulgarian officials maintain that it “cannot be said that the murder is related to the professional activity of the victim,” though the investigation is ongoing.

Reporters Without Borders, an NGO focused on protecting press freedoms, ranked Bulgaria 111 out of 180 countries on their 2018 World Press Freedom Index. It holds the lowest ranking of any country in the European Union.

Marinova’s death marks the second murder of a prominent journalist the European Union this year. The first, the murder of Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak, occurred in February. In 2017, 46 journalists were killed with the explicit motive to silence them, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. With two and a half months left, 2018 is projected to be even more deadly.

These murders come alongside redoubled distrust in media sources globally. While the freedom of the press is a critical part of democratic societies, public figures are increasingly leading the war on facts.