Human Rights Project

A Roma man burns himself in front of the Presidency

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Sofia, August 5 - At noon on July 26 2002 the Roma man Ivan Perov, 34, tried to burn himself in front of the building of the Presidency in central Sofia. Mr. Perov has been hospitalized. Six-year-old child Rozalinka was prepared by her mother to be burnt, but police intervention prevented the burning. These acts were undertaken in order to protest against the deportation of the clan from their place of residence.

The described event is a consequence of the odyssey of the Roma clan Zrunkovi from Vidin (located on the Danube river in Northwest Bulgaria). From June 24 to this day the Zrunkovi clan which consists of 63 people (30 of which are children) have been wandering from place to place in search of a place for residence.

Background. The clan of Zrunkovi was expelled from their place of residence after riots broke out in the Roma neighborhood Nov Pat on June 22-24. Several days earlier, on June 16, 19-year-old Tzvetelin Perov, who was known to be mentally retarded, attempted to steal some small goods from the shop of another Roma clan Markovi. The police arrested the boy and released him two hours later. Three days later Tzvetelin was found dead. His relatives alleged that he was killed by the owners of the shop, the Markovi brothers. On June 22, 41-year-old the Rom Georgi Markov (member of the opposite clan of Markovi) was killed in brawl on the front of one of the houses of Zrunkovi.

On June 23-24 a large crowd of inhabitants of the neighbourhood attacked the houses of Zrunkovi, alongside some of their shops and cafes. Six people were wounded, and three houses of the Zrunkovi family were burned. In the early morning of June 24 a special group of 350 people from the constabulary together with 3 scout cars entered into the neighborhood. The group was under the command of Gen. Boyko Borissov, Chief Secretary of the Interior Ministry. At the morning of June 24 the situation in the neighborhood calmed down.

The deportation. On June 24 the Roma clan of Zrunkovi was deported from Vidin. The decision was taken during a meeting between the governor of the region, the mayor of Vidin, the chief of the police and the local MP Nina Chilova (from the ruling majority). Zrunkovi were told that the deportation was a temporarily measure and that they would be able to return upon normalisation of the situation. They were told that the police could not guarantee their safety and that they have had to leave the town. They were shown a list of seven military objects no longer in use to chose from for a place to settle. For more than a month they have gone about from one place to another seeking an appropriate place for settlement. Everywhere they have been met with demonstrations organised by the local authorities and local people. The case has been largely reported in the media and most people believe that the Zrunkovi family is dangerous; that is why people are afraid of them. At present members of the family are scattered in five different places.

The clan. Some of the members of the family are well known in the neighborhood as moneylenders. They have lent money to poor Roma families with a very high interest. As a result a lot of people have been unable to repay their debts and thus their houses have became possessions of the moneylenders. There are a lot of similar cases in all Roma neighbourhoods. The reason is an extremely high level of poverty among the Roma. Because of this some members of the clan have been hated by many of their neighbours. As it is practically in all places across the country, the Roma population from the Nov Pat neighborhood is almost completely unemployed. Indeed in contrast to the situation in a lot of the neighborhoods Roma people in the Nov Pat have relatively solid houses. The houses are heritage from the past, when they had employment.

The approach of the authorities. The Roma NGO Drom from Vidin reported and a lot of independent sources confirmed the conclusions of Drom that the approach of the police toward the situation in Nov Pat was extremely inadequate. The neghbourhood - with a population of some 15,000 people - does not have a a police station and only three policemen patrol through the neighborhood. Three days the local police neglected the clear signs that the tension in the neighborhood was escalating. According to information from the MP Stoycho Katzarov more than four hours after the riots broke out the local police did not interfere, but rather waited for the arrival of the Chief Secretary of the Interior Ministry Gen. Borissov. Gen. Borissov arrived with more than 350 soldiers and a group of journalists.

There is no a formal warrant for the expelling of Zrunkovi from Vidin, but nevertheless they were interned from the town. In spite of police claims that the internment was voluntary, other data corroborates the assumption that they were forced to leave their hometown. Upon their leaving the authorities were not able to provide them with elementary protection. They wandered around the country and there was neither local nor national authority that could provide them with safety. That is the way they could not stop their roaming at a place. As it was mentioned above in every place the inhabitants organized different forms of protest against their settlement at the respective place.

In that case which received a large reverberation in the media the state displays again its inability to cope with the tensions and disorders that emerge among the Roma people in their neighborhoods. Beside this the state displays also its unwillingness to protect the human rights of the Roma people. In the Zrunkovi case this reluctance was all too clear. It showed also its inability to separate the guilty persons from the innocent ones and respectively to punish the former and to protect the latter.

The approach of the state was the final cause of the extreme way of protest that choose a part of that big family.

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*Human Rights Project was established in the summer of 1992 as a non-profit organization focusing on monitoring the human rights situation of the Roma in Bulgaria, and on legal defense in cases of serious human rights abuses. The HRP monitors the human rights situation of the Roma community in Bulgaria and reports on the cases which it had investigated; works with Roma volunteers from all over the country who report on the human rights observation in their region; conduct independent extrajudicial investigation into allegations of human rights violations against Roma; hire lawyers to take up selected cases and monitors the process of legal defense; advocates legislative and policy changes in favor of Roma.

Rumian Russinov is Chair of the Board of HRP. Dimitrina Petrova and Nikolai Gouginski are members of the Board.

Emil Cohen emilcohen@mbox.cit.bg is Executive Director.

Our address: 23 Solunska St., 6th floor; 1000 Sofia, Bulgaria

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