Country: Bulgaria
Group: Roma
Date Finalized: 04/12/22
Team: Maki Davidson (lead), Deneb Bobadilla, Gabriel Cardenas, Omer Carrillo, Gabby Staker
Content Warning: Discrimination
Approximate Time Period: 1950-present
The Roma (or Romani) people are an ethnic minority that first arrived in Bulgaria around the 14th century (Minority Rights Group, 2021). Estimates of their population range from 4.9% to 20.9% of the total population (Shyrokonis, 2020). They converted to Islam under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and remain Muslim today (Minority Rights Group, 2021). Communist assimilation policies began in 1958 when the Bulgarian government forced the Roma to abandon their traditional nomadic lifestyle and resettle to collective agricultural farms or overcrowded urban housing projects (Vassilev, 2004). The Bulgarian government forced them to live on unwanted land and established ghettos, leading to social stigmatization and isolation (Mijatovic, 2020; Minority Rights Group, 2021; Shyrokonis, 2020). Concentrations of the Roma populations were and still are in large, urban ghettos, like Fakulteta in Sofia or Maksuda in Varna. After the end of Communist rule in 1989, the Bulgarian government continued to deny the Romani land rights, further exacerbating their poor living conditions and ghettoization via segregation within schools (Minority Rights Group, 2021). In January 2019, a fight broke out between two ethnically Roma men and a third man who is not ethnically Roma. The non-Roma Bulgarian man was hospitalized, and racist perceptions of the Roma people as violent flourished in light of the event, leading to non-Roma Bulgarian right-wing groups to conduct “protests” of “illegal homes” in Roma neighborhoods (Uber, 2019). These protests demanded the demolition of all Roma houses in the neighborhood, and authorities issued orders for the demolition of houses on grounds that they were illegally built or unsafe. Some 200 Roma fled their homes in the village of Voyvodinovo due to fear and the threat of mob violence. (Mijatovic, 2020, pg 8).
The Bulgarian political institutions and right-wing groups still discriminate against the Romani people. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this discrimination, as Roma villages disproportionately faced harsher lockdown measures than other Bulgarian communities. Several Roma communities were shut off from the rest of the country by the Bulgarian government, citing a rise in COVID-19 cases even though case numbers were much lower at the time. A police officer reportedly refused to allow a Roma man to enter a nearby, wealthier town to get water from a spring for his home. A lack of access to computers and the internet has also contributed to Roma children falling further behind in school (Kingsley, 2020). The lack of infrastructure such as clean, running water and general impoverishment contribute to these events. The national government has adopted measures aimed at improving the living conditions of Roma, including the 2012-2020 National Roma Integration Strategy of the Republic of Bulgaria, which focuses on educational integration and combating poverty and exclusion (European Union, 2017); however, for reasons cited above, the Roma appear to continue to face discrimination.
Data Quality: Data quality for evidence of the Roma people being forced away is rated a 3/3. There is an abundance of academic sources, as well as credible, non-academic sources and first-hand accounts of discrimination. One citation used is from the Bulgarian government; however, it is an outline of a policy strategy that may or may not have made conditions better or worse for the Roma people.
Sources
Patrick, K. & Dzhambazova, B. (6 July 2020). “Europe’s Roma already faced discrimination. The pandemic made it worse. – The New York Times.” The New York Times – Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/world/europe/coronavirus-roma-bulgaria.html.
Mijatovic, D. (2020, March 31). Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe – coe. Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://rm.coe.int/report-on-the-visit-to-bulgaria-from-25-to-29-november-2019-by-dunja-m/16809cde16
European Commission “National Roma Integration Strategy for the Republic of Bulgaria.” European Commission, European Union, 5 June 2017, https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/roma_bulgaria_strategy_en.pdf.
Minority Rights Group. (2021, February 5). Roma. Retrieved February 1, 2022, from https://minorityrights.org/minorities/roma-2/
Shyrokonis, Yuliya. “EU Citizenship, but No Shoes: The Roma of Bulgaria | openDemocracy.” openDemocracy, openDemocracy Limited, 20 Jan. 2020, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/eu-citizenship-no-shoes-roma-bulgaria/.
Uber, S. (2019, January 17). Calls for Bulgarian minister Karakachanov to resign Grow Louder. European Roma Rights Centre. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from http://www.errc.org/news/calls-for-bulgarian-minister-karakachanov-to-resign-grow-louder
Vassilev, R. (2004). The Roma of Bulgaria: A pariah minority. Global Review of Ethnopolitics, 3(2), 40–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/14718800408405164