Bulgarian activists are working in areas of eastern Albania populated by Macedonians, trying to get the locals to adopt a Bulgarian identity, informs member of Parliament Vasil Sterjovski. Sterjovski says that the Bulgarian side is preying on people using their poverty.

Like Jehova’s witnesses, they want to use the economic situation of the people to change their national identity. Macedonians in Mala Prespa and throughout Albania have endured more and will endure the Bulgarian propaganda, Sterjovski said.

He noted that the first such attempts were tried by the Bulgarian exarchate church more than a hundred years ago, and were compared to “spending money to buy wind” as the local Macedonians refused to change their identities.

Recently, a Bulgarian TV crew had a testy exchange with a Macedonian historian and the locals in Albania, as they were trying to present the locals as Bulgarians.