Racism is alive and well in Bulgaria

There were a number of incidents over the weekend in a village called Katunitza which is not far from Bulgaria's second largest city, Plovdiv. Katunitza is the home of Tsar Kiro Raskov (the self styled leader of the Roma).

Following an argument between Raskov's family and another on Friday, a 19 year old boy was run over and killed by a mini bus driven by someone from the Roma community. Subsequently another 16 year old villager died, apparently from a heart attack.

Rioting in Katunitza

After that, tensions rose in the village culminating in rioting by local villagers who object to the presence of Tsar Kiro in the village. The police stood idly by and for a while let it happen. Elsewhere there were protests in many towns in Bulgaria, anti-Roma Facebook groups were formed and skin-heads and bikers flocked to Katunitza to partake in the violence.

Nationalist political leaders climbed on the bandwagon and called for the convening of the National Security Council and parliament. On Sunday night hundreds of thugs marched on a Roma settlement in Plovdiv. The only sensible political voice to be heard was that of the Prime Minister who correctly identified the issue as a criminal matter and called for calm.

News reporting of the weekend's events characterized them as essentially ethnic. The media asserted that Roma criminals had murdered the young boy (there was no proof offered for this allegation) and the word Roma was repeatedly used to in order to depict the incident as an ethnic conflict. It was some of the most irresponsible and racially charged reporting by an allegedly objective profession that I have ever witnessed and undoubtedly contributed to the heightening of ethnic tensions over the weekend.

Roma ghetto near Plovdiv

Of course the whole incident shines a spotlight on Bulgaria's treatment of the Roma. There are somewhere between 370,000 and 800,000 Roma living in Bulgaria. The vast majority live in appalling squalor in ghettoes and in abject poverty. They suffer disease rates far in excess of the so-called "ethnic Bulgarian community". The child mortality for Roma children is far in excess of national norms.

The illiteracy rates among adults and children are extraordinarily high. Roma children attend segregated schools of very low quality and in some cases are educated alongside special needs children as they are not accepted into "normal schools". Over 10,000 Roma children come to the attention of the social system every year and the vast majority are placed in institutional care facilities. Unemployment levels are extremely high and many turn to crime to make ends meet. Many Roma are not officially registered and do not qualify for existing meagre social welfare payments.

It's against this backdrop that the reporting and events of the weekend need to be assessed and not the rantings and mob violence of fascist thugs and their leaders. It would be wrong to dismiss the violence as the work of a minority however. Most Bulgarians have a deep loathing and prejudice against the Roma and there is little support for them. It was not long ago that a socialist member of parliament said that it was ok for 14 year old Roma girls to be prostitutes. The same individual maintained that Roma should be confined to ghettoes as they were lazy and inclined to theft.

Thousands march against the
Roma in Plovdiv

Many will try to depict the weekend's violence as merely vigilante action against criminals and that it had nothing to do with ethnicity or race. They are either fooling themselves or they are liars. When was the last time we saw these kind of protests against non-Roma "ethnic Bulgarian" criminals? It is not as though there aren't enough to protest against! When was the last time that skinheads and bikers attacked houses and property owned by the Mafia? When was the last time that concerned citizens marched on the houses of Mafia families and demanded their eviction from the community?

I was at a friend's house not long ago. A couple there had adopted a Roma child. She was beautiful and happily smiled and played throughout the afternoon. She was was full of joy. Unlike her sisters and brothers and many thousands of Roma children, she had a future. They have not.

Bulgarians rightly take pride in the fact that during the second world war tens of thousands of Bulgarian Jews were saved from the death camps. It should also be remembered that hundreds of thousands of Roma were executed during that same war. A society should be judged on how it looks after and protects its minorities. Over the weekend, Bulgaria took a step backwards towards ethnic cleansing and into the racist abyss. Has it got the courage and leadership to step away?