Can Bulgaria Govt Sort Out the Roma Problem?

Letters to the Editor | April 13, 2011, Wednesday // 11:44

When Boyko Borisov uttered the following words last week, in support of the Roma community in Bulgaria, they must have listened in disbelief ... "The Roma must break the vicious cycle of having someone else helping them and must exert their efforts". The personal example is really important. The problem is that no one has ever tried to integrate or control the Roma, like they have with their own citizens, just ignored them and now wonder why they are out of control and don't comply with any laws or respect the country they live in. Society is applying medieval conditions on these people and that's an indictment against all Europeans.

If you speak to a Bulgarian (even a professional person) about the Roma problem, their whole attitude changes and they become aggressive and so racist it's astonishing. They can't even utter the words " Roma" but use the derogative term Gypsies. When you ask why do they hate these people who are Bulgarian citizens, they say that they are - dirty, they don't work, live in houses not fit for animals, have lots of children, have no respect for the law, rob everyone, are parasites and suck the life blood out of Bulgaria. If you inquire whether they recognize the Roma as fellow human beings, they repeat their xenophobic prejudice. I do believe that if you told some Bulgarians that a new law had now been passed to exterminate the Roma, they would be very satisfied!

The parasites and leeches are their own people, Bulgarians who have robbed and stole the food out of their mouths, through organized crime and every other way they can. But for some reason these people are idolized and fill all the pages of the tabloids with their opulent life style, made on the backs of their fellow Bulgarians. The Bulgarians are not alone in their hatred of the Roma; all the Eastern European countries that they live in are the same, maybe because they all share similar circumstances in their past.

What has caused this outburst of hatred from the Bulgarians? This is a nation of people who are not know for revolutionary or radical thinking in their history, but prefer the apathetic route and approach to most things in life. Living under a totalitarian regime polarizes opinion and discussion and maybe the seeds of hate were sown then. I know that black people also get abuse in Sofia and are called "monkeys"

Here is an extract from the last letter of Vasil Levski to " his people" before he was hung-:  He hated any form of prejudice or corruption.

For those who incite hatred among people living in our dear Fatherland, either ethnic or religious grounds, to kill while in between, they can accumulate wealth, the punishment is death, death and death again. For those who promise a lot, just to select them to rule over you, and then reneging on his words by saying that times were tough and they see you do not presuppose that such a situation, the punishment is confiscation of property and exile outside our homeland. For those under the veil of patriotism, building laws, but they do not respect them or use them to their advantage, the penalty is death, death and death again.

The EU also has a big responsibility for the Roma problem and are only now under pressure from some other EU countries (where they have moved to recently), to do something about them. The Jewish people will tell you that they are the most persecuted people on this planet, but that's not true as the Roma have been pushed around everywhere and still are not accepted in any of the countries where they are living.

During the Second World War nobody can be sure how many Roma did the Nazis murder, but it may have run into millions (the statisticians weren't so interested in their casualties). They are the forgotten Holocaust victims that history ignored and were never given the sympathy they deserved for their suffering, only racial abuse and hatred. Most people forget that Roma have traditions and a culture like other groups of ethnic peoples.

The time has now come for all governments to use their resources, to gradually bring the Roma into society and not treat them like outcasts in this twenty first century. Other countries have integrated large numbers of people from all over the world, who are now contributing to their society.

Maybe there is a little hope in the short term for the Bulgarian Roma; with the elections on the horizon when their status seems to get a lot bigger and they become very popular with the politicians!!

Keith Gregory

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Tags: Roma, minorities

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