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Starvation, food riots and police violence

By Liz Fekete

1 August 1997

According to ERRC 'the latest news on Roma in Bulgaria is of starvation and food riots - and police abuse in their wake'.

Food riots occurred in Pazardzhik, Plovdiv and Rakovski where Romani told the media that they could not bear the hunger anymore, since for three months they had eaten only corn.

The ERRC reports that on:

3, 4 February: Three Romani children from the town of Stara Zagora starved to death;
4 February: Two thousand Romani who demonstrated in Pazardzhik against discrimination by the government and local authorities are particularly aggrieved by the rise in food prices. Three shops are looted for food, as children shout 'we are hungry'.

Later the director of the regional department at the interior ministry despatched a special police force to carry out a punitive and indiscriminate raid on the predominantly Roma neighbourhood of Iztok. Houses were raided, windows broken and furniture destroyed. Around 60 Roma were beaten with truncheons.

The Sofia-based Human Rights Project says that while the regional department at the interior ministry denied any misuse of police power or that innocent Roma had been beaten, the head of the police station in the Iztok neighbourhood says that he witnessed the beatings of innocent Roma.

Roma Rights, Spring 1997

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