This is an edited extract from the annual report by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee on human rights in Bulgaria:

In the parliamentary election held in June, the extreme nationalist coalition called Ataka won representation in the Bulgarian Parliament. In its election campaign, Ataka used aggressive racist and xenophobic propaganda, mainly targeted at the Bulgarian Roma population. More than once, the coalition’s leader and other representatives described the Roma as a criminal community and a threat to ethnic Bulgarians, due to their high birth rates. To a lesser degree, Bulgarian Muslims were also the target of the group’s attacks, as well as representatives of other, smaller religious minorities. At the end of July, during the process of negotiations to form a government, in which the MRF was involved, members of Ataka demonstrated in front of Parliament, shouting “We won’t let Stanishev put fezzes on our heads!: The leader of Ataka is an extreme anti-Semite and holocaust denier. The party’s entry into Parliament stimulated negative stereotyping of the Roma in the media, and made any kind of integration policy difficult. In practice, no such policy was conducted at all by the Bulgarian government over the course of the year, despite its declarations of support for the Decade of Roma Inclusion, which was officially launched in Sofia at the beginning of February.

Discrimination against and the social exclusion of the Roma continued to be seen in the spheres of education, housing policy, employment, health care, and the administration of justice. On August 31, more than 20 homes were demolished in one of Sofia’s Roma neighborhoods, on orders from the regional mayor’s administration. No housing was provided for the people left homeless by that action. In September, the administration in another region of Sofia attempted to tear down an entire Roma neighbourhood, in existence since the start of the 20th century, without securing any shelter for the people who would be left with no roofs over their heads. That attempt was temporarily halted by the prosecutor’s office and the court, until the legal and factual situation could be clarified. However, the threat of demolition remained hanging over those Roma families.

After the formation of a new government following the June parliamentary elections, nationalistically motivated protests were held in several Bulgarian cities, against the appointment of regional governors from the MRF, one of the three partners in the new ruling coalition, which traditionally wins the votes of people from ethnic minorities. In August, an initiative committee from the Pazardzhik region stated that Sergey Stanishev should to read the order appointing the regional governor in the church at Batak. At the same time, 15 Bourgas-based organisations announced that if any “Turks or Bulgarians from the MRF’s quota” were appointed for the Burgas region, a civil war would break out. At demonstrations in Varna, those present shouted the slogan: “We don’t want a governor with a turban!” Such nationalistic attitudes even spread to the ruling coalition’s local partners. Thus, the leader of the BSP in Panagyurishte, Nedyalka Naplatanova, announced that “an MRF governor of the Pazardzhik region would be a mockery of the traditions of the Fourth Revolutionary District.”

In 2005, court enforcement of the Anti-Discrimination Act (ADA) continued. Several significant decisions were handed down in courts of the first instance in cases involving the protection of Roma from racial discrimination. For the first time - not only in Bulgaria but in all of Europe - a court found that there was segregation of Roma children in a school. The Sofia District Court ruled that School No. 103 in the Roma neighborhood of Fillipovtsi in Sofia, the pupils of which are exclusively Roma, was racially segregated in violation of the law, and that the parties responsible were the Minister of Education and the municipal authorities. The court found that these officials, who are duty-bound not to allow segregation in the educational system, had been negligent, and that the negative consequences to society of that situation were enormous. The suit had been filed on behalf of the European Centre for Roma Rights, an international organisation working in the public interest, on the basis of the special right that such organisations have to file anti-discrimination suits in the public interest.

In January 2006, the Office of the Chief Prosecutor was sued for the first time for discrimination against ethnic Roma. The Sofia District Court’s decision finding discrimination set a precedent, in its ruling that statements made by a magistrate that express a negative, disparaging attitude towards the Roma as an ethnic group constituted a violation of the constitution and of international law. The prosecutor’s racist statements has been made in the text of an official prosecutor order ending the investigation into the death of a Roma citizen. The suit was filed and won by the brother of the deceased man, who had also suffered along with his mother in the tragic incident. The case revealed a significant problem in the Bulgarian criminal justice system, which systematically discriminates against the Roma, leaving them defenceless when they are the victims of crime, but pursuing them with disproportionate harshness when they are accused of perpetrating crimes.

The country’s courts ruled against a number of commercial enterprises that own public spaces such as cafes, restaurants and hotels, for their ethnically-motivated refusals to serve Roma, as well as private employers, for refusals to hire Roma people for job positions. Among those found guilty of refusing Roma people access to public services was such an important public institution as the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, as well as the director of the academy’s institutional hotel. The director had refused to allow some Roma to use the hotel’s services, openly stating that he did not accept Roma as customers.

These court cases received quite a bit of media interest, and in a number of instances, the media showed an understanding of their importance and support for their goal of fostering reform. In 2005 the media began to examine the question of equality, difference and anti-discrimination legislation more and more often; this helped contribute to a societal change in the direction of increasing equal opportunity and tolerance. More than one year late (with that delay constituting a violation of the ADA), the Anti-Discrimination Commission finally began functioning in 2005, taking complaints and reports of discrimination. However, the commission did not pronounce a single decision over the course of the year.

Despite the positive developments in the sphere of court protection from discrimination, as a practice, discrimination in this country did not decrease in 2005. On the contrary, the situation of xenophobic propaganda and incitement to racial hatred worsened considerably during the election campaign of the Ataka coalition, and its subsequent entry into parliament. The radical incitement to ethnic hostility and fomenting discrimination spread by Siderov and his followers did not provoke any reasonable reaction on the part of the main political powers, nor from the public institutions having the authority to enforce the law.