Bulgaria
Recent stories
Dispute in Muslim community
Bulgaria's one million Muslims are locked in a dispute and being split at least three ways in a spat about the appointment of the chief mufti, in which the Christian Orthodox majority has now become embroiled.
30 October 2004 (144 words)
European Court to rule on police brutality case
On 18 July 2001 three young Romani men were arrested in Sofia by plainclothes police brandishing handguns, who accused them of stealing metal sheets.
21 April 2004 (167 words)
Police killing of Roma violated European human rights' convention
A judgement from the European Court of Human Rights on 1 March, which found Bulgaria guilty of deprivation of life of two Roma, is due to have wide repercussions.
27 February 2004 (288 words)
ECRI reports on Bulgarian racism
A special report has been issued by ECRI on racism within Bulgaria.
27 January 2004 (90 words)
Anti-Roma discrimination in criminal justice system alleged
The European Roma Rights Center and the Human Rights Project have sent letters to the Bulgarian National Assembly and to the Prime Minister to complain about the way in which Roma people are being discriminated against in the criminal justice system.
15 December 2003 (177 words)
Anti-Roma rhetoric in local elections causes concern
Because of the anti-Roma rhetoric in the run up to local elections in Bulgaria, a seminar of prominent Roma politicians, journalists and public figures, organised by Drom Dromendar, the Human Rights Project and the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, was held on 12 November.
24 November 2003 (151 words)
Silistra: protests follow murder of Roma man
On the evening of 2 August Gunal Taliat, a Muslim Turkish-speaking Roma, was killed in a brawl outside a disco in Silistra, in the north-east of the country on the Danube.
15 August 2003 (108 words)
Kazanlak region: Roma killed in man-trap
On 7 October 2002 Boyan Mihailov, a 24-year-old Romani man, apparently trespassing in a Bulgarian vineyard in the Kazanlak region, was shot and killed by a home-made firearm trap.
1 November 2002 (98 words)
Samakov, Sofia region: serious attacks on Roma
According to the Sofia-based Human Rights Project, a gang attack on two Roma by twenty Bulgarian youths at a bus station in Samakov, Sofia region, left one of the Roma seriously injured.
1 August 2002 (85 words)
Anti-Roma violence
Arson investigated
1 January 2002 (144 words)
Roma death caused by police, says European Court
Following a long struggle by the common-law wife of a Roma who died in police custody in Pleven in September 1994, the European Court of Human Rights has concluded that there is enough evidence to conclude that 49-year-old Slavcho Tsonchev died from injuries inflicted while in police custody.
1 January 2001 (189 words)
Evidence of institutional police racism
AI has called on the authorities to urgently address anti-Roma sentiments among law enforcement officers by implementing a national strategy to stop the systemic abuse of Roma by police officers.
1 January 2001 (259 words)
Intellectuals condemn 'gypsification' of Bulgarian villages
On 2 May, the nationalist weekly newspaper Nova Zora published an open letter from 374 intellectuals and artists, calling upon the Bulgarian president to 'stop the oriental invasion'.
1 January 2001 (70 words)
Anti-Roma sentiment in villages grows
AI has warned of rising social tensions across Bulgaria which have been created by the marginalisation of the Roma in a period of economic and social transition.
1 January 2001 (202 words)
Roma seriously wounded by police in Burgas district
The Sofia-based Human Rights Project (HRP) reports that on 11 January 2000 a 26-year-old Romani Stefan Yordanov was shot and seriously injured by police in the Burgas district of eastern Bulgaria.
1 August 2000 (63 words)
ERRC cite police abuse of Roma
The ERRC newsletter cites two cases of police abuse of Roma.
1 March 2000 (81 words)
Asylum law signals adoption of EU migration policy
Bulgaria has introduced its first asylum law which is broadly welcomed as a positive development by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee.
1 March 2000 (123 words)
Roma villagers terrorised by indiscriminate mass raid
According to the Sofia-based Human Rights Project (HRP), over thirty Rom were beaten with truncheons when around 80 police officers raided the Romani neighbourhood in the village of Mechka.
1 March 1999 (90 words)
Roma are victims of killings, torture and ill-treatment
According to Amnesty International (AI), at least five people died in 1998 as a result of torture or ill-treatment by law-enforcement officers and shootings in disputed circumstances resulted in at least nine deaths.
1 March 1999 (263 words)
Roma civil rights must be addressed
Bulgaria's National Ethnic and Demographic Council is working with Roma representatives to draft a new programme to improve the situation facing Bulgaria's estimated 600000 Roma population (7% of total population).
1 October 1998 (43 words)
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