This is an edited extract from the United States state department on human rights in Bulgaria, released in March 2006:

Societal discrimination against the Roma and other minority groups increased during 2005, occasionally resulting in incidents of violence between the members of the ethnic Bulgarian majority and ethnic Romani minority.

According to a 2001 census, non-Muslim ethnic Bulgarians made up 86 per cent and ethnic Turks nine per cent of the population. Although the Roma were officially estimated to comprise 4.6 per cent of the population, their actual share was more likely between six and seven per cent, according to a 2002 Council of Europe report that counted 600 000 to 800 000 Roma in the country. Ethnic Bulgarian Muslims, often termed Pomaks, are a distinct group of Slavic descent whose ancestors converted from Orthodox Christianity to Islam; they constituted two to three per cent of the population.

Although there were no reports of lethal police assaults on Roma, police harassed, physically abused, and arbitrarily arrested some Roma, and reports of police harassment and torture were documented. The government made little progress in resolving cases of police violence against Roma. Human rights groups complained that magistrates sometimes failed to pursue crimes committed against minorities.

On August 1, inflammatory anti-Roma leaflets were distributed following a violent altercation between ethnic Bulgarians and Roma in Pleven on July 30. Ethnic Bulgarian residents of the Storgozia area in Pleven unsuccessfully asked city officials to evict Romani residents from the buildings in which the fight took place.

During the summer Ataka and another political party proposed two draft laws to create “self-defence groups” designed to take punitive action against “Romani criminals”. Neither piece of legislation passed, and there was no evidence that vigilante groups of this nature existed in practice.

On February 19, a group of youths beat a Romani family on a train near the village of Osetenovo. Human rights monitors reported that the attackers, who disseminated racist leaflets to passengers, were members of a nationalistic group that had a gathering the same day. Transportation police launched an investigation into the incident, and an NGO hired an attorney to represent the victims. No further developments had been publicised by the end of the year.

Victims of ethnically motivated violence included ethnic Bulgarians as well as Roma. In a highly publicised case that contributed to ethnic tensions in the country, Stanomir Kaloyanov, an ethnic Bulgarian professor, died of head injuries sustained during a May 23 race-related brawl in the ethnically mixed Zaharna Fabrika neighborhood of Sofia. Three ethnic Romani suspects were arrested immediately following the incident and were released without charge. At year’s end the investigation into the murder was ongoing.

There were no developments relating to cases of skinhead violence against Romani residents of Sofia in 2004.

There were no developments in the April 2004 case in which two men reportedly brutally beat Georgi Angelov, a Rom, and cut off his ear with a razor blade. Human rights groups reported that the police failed to effectively investigate this and similar incidents.

The unemployment rate among the Roma was nearly 65 per cent, reaching as high as 80 per cent in some regions. About 10 per cent of Roma had graduated from high school and only one per cent had a university degree. Severe unemployment and poverty among the Roma, combined with generally unfavourable attitudes toward Roma among ethnic Bulgarians and Turks, contributed to strained relations between the Roma and the rest of society.

Workplace discrimination against minorities, especially the Roma, continued to be a problem.

Many Roma and other observers made credible allegations that the quality of education offered to Romani children was inferior to that afforded most other students.

Many Roma lived in substandard housing and lacked legal registration for their places of residences. This situation rendered them particularly vulnerable in August, when Sofia city officials ordered the demolition of 22 Romani houses lacking legal deeds in the Hristo Botev district of Sofia. Approximately 150 Roma were left homeless. NGOs responded with fierce criticism, characterising the demolitions as an election year attempt to exploit anti-Roma sentiment.

The Roma were disproportionately affected by the summer floods that destroyed vital infrastructure and displaced more than 500 people. Observers attributed the greater vulnerability of the Roma to displacement to pre-existing economic hardship and harsh living conditions.

With the support of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the government attempted to provide housing for families previously displaced in 2001 by building new apartment blocks in Sofia and Plovdiv. However, NGOs reported that only 80 families had been resettled in Sofia by October, and many of the new units were put to commercial, rather than residential use.

NGOs reported that Roma encountered difficulties applying for social benefits, and local officials discouraged rural Roma from claiming land to which they were entitled under the law disbanding agricultural collectives. Many Roma suffered from inadequate access to health care.

On July 27, a Blagoevgrad trial court ruled against a restaurant that had denied service to Romani customers. The court found the refusal of services to be in violation of country’s anti-discrimination law and ordered the restaurant to refrain from repeating such conduct. The claim had been brought by the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), which used the law’s provision authorising public interest lawsuits by NGOs.

During the year the NGO Romani Baht filed 18 discrimination cases under the 2003 protection against discrimination act. The cases, which alleged discrimination in employment, education, access to public buildings, and ethnically motivated harassment, were ongoing at year’s end. Five of the six cases that Romani Baht filed in 2004 were successful.

The country’s small population of Pomaks remained in an ambiguous position. In the town of Yakoruda, local officials refused to recognise the Pomak identity, and those calling themselves Pomaks alleged discrimination by government officials.

With the support of local NGOs and foreign donors the government implemented a program to teach Romani folklore and history to over 5000 children in an effort to increase inter-ethnic understanding and fight prejudice. Government integration programs also included busing over 2000 Romani children from ghettoised neighbourhoods to mixed-ethnicity schools. Assistant teachers from minority backgrounds were hired to assist children from Turkish and Romani linguistic minorities to learn Bulgarian and to integrate into mixed classes.