The National Statistical Office's (NSO) 2011 Census that was released this past week by the Bulgarian Government came up with only 1,654 Bulgarian citizens - out of the total of over 7.3 million citizens in the country which declared Macedonian descent, suggesting quite ridiculously that the Macedonian population has somehow decreased three times in size since 2001, or more than 100 times in size since the 1958 census when 187,789 Bulgarian citizens declared themselves to be of Macedonian descent.
Such unfathomable statistics could only result from manipulation of data and intimidation of Census participants (and workers) by the Bulgarian government. If Kosovo's census workers added 150,000 to its population by making up nonexisting neighborhoods and buildings (they were paid by the count), the Bulgarian census workers had the privilege to fill out the census forms without visiting or talking to people, because they simply "know" their people and their ethnicities!
Kosovo embarassed by the flawed census have said will re-do theirs, while Bulgaria will not, well it is Bulgaria. Would not be surprising if in the next census official Sofia comes up with 7 Macedonians :-).
Stojko Stojkov, leader of the Macedonian minority party OMO "Ilinden" - PIRIN, and Jordan Ivanov, leader of OMO "Ilinden", both denounced the 2011 Census as just the most recent chapter in the Bulgarian government's longstanding program to eliminate their Macedonian minority on paper.
