🚀 go-pugleaf

 Cydrome Leader <prese...@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:
> wis...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > "(David P.)" <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-04-22-popkostadinova-en.html
>
> here's the short version of this long winded story
> gypsies are crap.

[...]
As with other new member states from eastern Europe, the
European Commission urged Romania & Bulgaria to implement
a zero-tolerance policy against racism before joining the
EU. According to Katharina von Schnurbein, spokesperson
for Vladimir Spidla, the Social Affairs Commissioner who
counts Roma issues as part of his portfolio, this included
"legal follow-up of incidents occurring in Roma settlements
and fighting the ill-treatment of people".

But little change was brought to bear, and admitting that
racism exists remains taboo. This, along with chronic
neglect, has left the policies signed up to by the
Bulgarian authorities, such as the "Decade of Roma
Inclusion" or the "2007 European Year of Equal Oppor-
tunities for All", a dead letter.

A walk through Stolipinovo confirms this impression.
Lying on the outskirts of Bulgaria's second city of
Plovdiv, it is, with its 35,000 inhabitants, the second
biggest Roma ghetto in Bulgaria. At lunchtime on a typical
weekday, everybody is around and the streets are alive
with clamour. Children play in the mud, men bustle about
in small groups and women wash clothes in front of their
apartment blocks.

But the inhabitants are chronically deprived and suffer
from bad health. "We have had no running water for ten
years," complains a small, blue-eyed woman, her hair
piled up in a bun. "All 3 of my children got hepatitis
last summer as a result."

She goes on: "They have lice in their hair because I
cannot wash them. Some people accuse me of not sending
them to school. How can I send them in that state? I
won't send them!" The health and safety problems so
visibly present in Stolipinovo are replicated in Marchevo,
a village notorious for its poor conditions in the Rhodope
mountains of the south, near the town of Garmen. Its
origins date back to the 1960s, when a clan of basket
makers settled there in obedience to the 1957 decree.
It has long been a source of local epidemics on account
of its poor sanitation. "Only 500 metres of pipe were
needed for this mahala to be plugged into the town's
water supply," says Kalina Bozeva, head of the Inter-
Ethnic Initiative for Human Rights in Bulgaria. "It was
the responsibility of the municipality, but it only came
about recently, as the result of an NGO project."

Petar Dikov, Sofia's chief architect, explains that areas
populated by Roma were usually listed in urban plans as
industrial zones, in order to exempt municipalities from
having to build any infrastructure. It is much the same
over the border in Romania, where, according to Magda
Matache, head of a Bucharest-based Roma rights group,
Romani CRISS, such villages and settlements commonly
have no running water. "People there can only dream of
a sewage system," she says. "They have to walk miles
every day to the nearest well to bring home water for
their families."

Failure starts at school

Among the many mistakes & omissions made by the Bulgarian
government with regard to the Roma, none was so crucial
or so devastating as the way it mishandled the issue of
schooling. A policy of effective segregation has deprived
generations of Roma a chance to advance towards equal
participation in the labour market. In the Communist
era, Roma could only study in neighbourhood schools
geared to preparing them for blue-collar, low-qualified
jobs. Subjects taught in "normal" schools, like math &
history, were omitted.

"They produced generations of poorly educated people,"
says Krasimir Kunev, head of the Bulgarian Helsinki
Committee. Today almost 70% of Roma children continue to
study in de facto segregated schools, according to a 2006
Bulgarian Helsinki Committee report.  This, he explains,
also made Roma the group most vulnerable to economic
depression and high unemployment in the post-communist
transition. And although the state became aware of the
extent of the problem in the early- and mid-1990s, it has
done little to tackle it beyond providing welfare.

"This was a huge failure," Rumyan Sechkov maintains.
"It was the easy solution; people with no qualifications
remained under-qualified and marginalised." Meanwhile,
according to the historian, ordinary Bulgarians found
the welfare payouts unfair, which incited social tension.
The scale of the problem has kept growing, entrenching a
culture of dependency. "Now we are facing a national
problem because a whole generation of Roma has grown up,
never seeing their parents get up in the morning and go
to work," Sechkov maintains.

In 2006, 58% of Roma households were receiving some form
of social aid, according to the labour ministry.

But this is about to change. From 1 January 2008, new
rules will limit the period under which anyone can
receive welfare to 18 months. While designed to reduce
abuse of the system, critics insist the development will
have been in vain if it is not accompanied by polices
that target poor education and unemployment.

Roza Tzvetanova, 54, is sitting on the kerb in front of
her home in Stolipinovo. Her head wrapped in a bright
pink scarf, she rolls tobacco in her lap as she describes
how she and her five children survive on social benefits,
she without a job, her husband in prison. When she hears
she will soon have her welfare cut off, she becomes
furious: "Are they crazy? They are trying to exterminate
my children and me! No one wants to employ a 50-year-old
woman with elementary school. Don't they see this?"

Bulgaria is not alone in the region in failing to offer
its Roma a decent education. In recent decades, standards
have remained poor across Southeast Europe, giving Roma
few chances to escape poverty and participate in society
on an equal footing. But while other countries in the
region have taken the first steps towards breaking this
vicious circle, Bulgaria continues to neglect the issue.
[...]
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