Country: Bulgaria
Group: Roma
Date Finalized: 3/1/2022
Team: Gabby Staker (lead), Elizabeth Ardila, Deneb Bobadilla, Gabriel Cardenas, William Nicholson
Content Warning: physical violence, murder
Approximate Time Period: 1958- present
In the wake of Communist assimilation policy from 1958 until the demise of the regime in 1989, the Roma population living in Bulgaria experienced, and continues to experience, cases of ethnically-targeted lethal violence (Minority Rights Group, 2015).
A 2011 census report indicated that Roma make up 4.9 percent of the population in Bulgaria. However, non-governmental reports estimate that this data does not accurately reflect the Roma population, which is closer to 10 percent of the national population (Minority Rights Group, 2015). The former communist regime perpetrated violence against ethnic and religious minorities, and these effects have rippled into the present-day treatment of Roma in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee confirms reports of police perpetrating severe human rights abuses against Roma, illegal torture of Roma detainees, physical abuse and harrassment of street children (Vassilev, 2004). On August 21, 2007, four non-Roma teenagers killed a 17-year-old Roma boy in the town of Samokov, Sofia province because they did not believe he should be in the center of town (Refworld, 2007). In April 2016, an ethnic Bulgarian nationalist killed a 17-year-old Roma boy in the Ovchepoltsi village because the boy declared himself equal (European Roma Rights Centre, 2016). Cases of lethal violence such as these are not confined to the act of violence itself, but often have repercussions of continued violence and anti-Roma rallies in the communities involved. In January 2019, a dispute involving two young Roma men and an ethnic Bulgarian police officer in the village of Voyvodinovo escalated into anti-Roma protests which called for the demolition of Roma houses. Authorities immediately demolished houses, and approximately 200 Roma fled the village overnight for fear of further violence (Mijatović, 2020). Officials passed legislation in an attempt to combat this ethnic-based violence, including the 2006 Protection against Discrimination Act, intended to protect Roma victims of discrimination and facilitate a method for Roma to file complaints of discrimination to the Commission for Protection against Discrimination (Refworld, 2007). However, it is unclear whether such legislation is having marked effects upon the experience of the Roma in Bulgaria.
The data quality for the Roma experience of lethal violence is rated a 2/3 due to an abundance of news sources documenting individual cases of lethal violence. However, these sources lacked consistency in reporting of dates.
Sources
- Mijatović, D. (2020). COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE. Council of Europe, 28.
- Refugees, U. N. H. C. for. (n.d.). Refworld | 2007 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices—Bulgaria. Refworld. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://www.refworld.org/docid/47d92c35cd.html
- Minority Rights Group. Roma. (2015, June 19). https://minorityrights.org/minorities/roma-2/
- European Roma Rights Centre (n.d.). Romani Boy Attacked in Bulgaria for Declaring himself Equal (Hungary). February 28, 2022, from http://www.errc.org/press-releases/romani-boy-attacked-in-bulgaria-for-declaring-himself-equal
- Vassilev, R. (2004). The Roma of Bulgaria: A pariah minority. Global Review of Ethnopolitics, 3(2), 40–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/14718800408405164