Bulgaria: Ataka Party's Siderov joins in scuffles at anti-migrant protest

Chairman of the Ataka political party Volen Siderov argued and scuffled with police officers during a demonstration in Sofia on Tuesday. The Ataka Party's demonstration was against the recent influx of refugees and migrants entering Europe, which party officials labelled as a wave that is flooding "Christian Europe." In a speech given at the protest Siderov stated that they were "sent here to turn Bulgaria into a caliphate. They are sent here to turn Bulgaria into a place of bloody Islam." Siderov proposed that Bulgaria join the coalition of Russian-led forces to tackle the so-called Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria, which he believes will stem the flow of refugees into Europe. The right-wing, nationalist party have consistently argued that the Bulgarian government has been ill-prepared to deal with the refugee crisis and have proposed a more muscular response along the lines of Hungarian authorities led by Viktor Orban, who has built border defenses and criminalised entrance to the country without identification papers.