A MONUMENT TO GEORGI MARKOV UNVEILED IN SOFIA

A monument to Georgi Markov was unveiled at the “Journalist” Square in Sofia on 11th of November. The event is part of “25 years of Free Bulgaria” campaign, which was launched by Bulgaria’s President.

The monument was unveiled at an official ceremony attended by three Bulgarian Presidents – Zhelyo Zhelev, Peter Stoyanov and Rosen Plenveliev.

Georgi Markov is a Bulgarian writer and dissident. He was born in 1929 in Sofia. In 1969, Markov defected from the socialist Bulgaria, which at the time was ruled by the communist leader Todor Zhivkov.

Markov lived in Italy, then moved to London, where he worked for the Bulgarian section of BBC. He also worked as broadcaster for Deutsche Welle and radio “Free Europe”, which broadcast Markov sharing extracts from his book “Distant Reports about Bulgaria” (1977-1978), published in Zurich (1980-1981) and in Sofia (1990). In his reports, Markov criticized the communist regime in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria. He was sentenced to 6 years of imprisonment. The communist regime in Bulgaria described him as “traitor” and “non-returner”.

Georgi Markov was assassinated in central London on the way to his work at BBC on 7th September 1978, when a man, probably an agent of the Bulgarian State Security service, stabbed him in the thigh with the poison tipped umbrella, injecting a pellet containing ricin.

The Bulgarian dissident died in a hospital in London on 11th of September 1978. The assassination against him has remained in the history known as the “umbrella killing case”.