Bulgarians can be proud of their level of ethnic tolerance, many will tell you. Others do not agree. BULGARIAN people will be much more tolerant for the 'otherness' in people once they stop repeating how tolerant they really are.
UK citizen Mark Bossanyi said this at the launch of a campaign entitled Racism - Spot it and Stop It, organised by the Interethnic Initiative for Human Rights Foundation around the annual European-wide Action Week Against Racism.
Since March 21 was declared International Day for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by the General Assembly of the United Nations as a reaction to the massacre of 70 demonstrators in Sharpeville, South Africa, in 1960, Bulgaria has become one of the thousands of places to commemorate the event and to take action against discrimination.
"Racism and ethnic discrimination exist in all countries around the globe. This could be said to be a flaw so typical of humans," Bossanyi said, adding that racism and discrimination are frequently hard to recognise.
Thus, this year's campaign headed by United for Intercultural Action initiating practices against racism, nationalism and fascism and supporting migrants and asylum seekers, aimed to raise awareness among people towards racism in everyday life. Anti-racist education is necessary to empower people to resist racist propaganda and furthermore the campaign targeted to make racism visible in order to erase it, including our own prejudice towards others.
"To be tolerant means to be ready to try to understand people who are different from oneself, to put ourselves in their situation and to recognise that the social environment in which we have grown up restricts our own ability to understand certain things about others. It requires a readiness to be self-critical," Bossanyi told The Echo. For him, to be 100 per cent convinced of our own tolerance is by definition intolerant, because it implies that "others" are to blame for any problems in our relations with them. As in a marriage, there is never only one side to blame. "Tolerance is not a genetically-determined quality, miraculously present in Bulgarians or in any other ethnic group without them having to put any effort into it," he said.
Defining, spotting and dealing with racism and discrimination is something that Bulgaria still needs to work on. "The development of human rights in Bulgaria is contradictory," the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC) said in their annual report on the state of human rights for 2003 which was presented at the end of last month.
Krassimir Kunev, chairperson of the BHC, said that there had been progress made with the laws adopted on protection against discrimination, and the law providing for the appointment of an ombudsman, as well as an instruction of the Interior Ministry giving detainees the right to have a lawyer, a doctor and to inform close relatives.
"Many Bulgarians tend to be self-critical when they compare their own society with Western European and American societies, whom they perceive to be 'more developed'. Whether that is true or not is highly debatable. But that self-criticism usually disappears when many Bulgarians compare themselves with Asians, Africans and minorities within Bulgaria," Bossanyi said.
According to the BHC, in 2003 human rights protection in Bulgaria achieved successes mainly in improvement of the legislative and institutional framework. The Act on Protection against Discrimination has been effective from January 1 and is a significant advancement in the sphere of combating discrimination is a number of areas of public life. It sets up an administrative body with effective powers to investigate and punish discriminatory acts and turns the burden of proof from the victim to the perpetrator. In May, Parliament adopted the Ombudsman Act (effective from January 1), which sets up a formal system of advocacy in cases when actions and inactions of state or municipal organs violate the rights and freedoms of individuals.
Irrespective of its progress in terms of discrimination practices and tolerance Bulgaria made history at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) when it was found guilty of violating Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
"This has become a precedent in the history of Strasbourg court," Kunev told The Echo. In the Nachova vs Bulgaria Case, ECHR passed its first judgment citing Article 14 providing for the prohibition of discrimination.
Michael Head of the Council of Europe's committee against racism said that this was an unprecedented judgment. Many judgments had been passed against Council of Europe states for human rights violations but none had been for discrimination.
This particular judgment will have serious consequences for all Council of Europe countries.
Bossanyi compared levels of tolerance in the two countries in which he has lived for over nine years.
According to Bossanyi, the Race Relations Act became law in the UK in 1976 and was the first serious British legislation against discrimination. Until then overt racism was fairly common, and still occurs now. The legislation set standards that made it socially unacceptable or offensive to express racist or discriminatory views. This has had a definite effect on society in the past 28 years and a significant proportion of people in the country genuinely understand what tolerance means.
"Unfortunately, among some sections of British society, it is still not uncommon to detect a belief that despite everything, British society is the fairest, the most democratic, the most developed," Bossanyi said. Among these people, a veneer of tolerance masks a deep-seated attitude of superiority and is very patronising. There is still a fairly common self-congratulatory belief that British colonial rule was somehow "fairer" than the rule of other colonial powers or that of the newly-independent colonies, he said.
British legislation against racism is not effective enough in restricting the practices of the gutter press (the "yellow" newspapers, as they are called in Bulgaria) to increase their sales by inciting intolerance and hatred against immigrants, usually based on spurious arguments and misleading statistics, Bossanyi said. This problem is becoming increasingly serious and is generating an environment in which the public fails to object to unacceptable practices to restrict immigration.
"In Bulgaria, the first specific law against discrimination came into force at the beginning of this year. It was adopted not because the political elite considered it desirable, but because it is one of the requirements for EU accession," Bossanyi said. Parliament adopted it very reluctantly, because like a huge majority of institutions in Bulgaria, the prevailing belief is that "there cannot be ethnic discrimination in Bulgaria because Bulgarians are tolerant".
For Bossanyi the Communist authorities of 1944-1989 spoke of racism as something unique to the West, where they "beat Negroes", and that, since communist society is almost perfect, racism and discrimination could not possibly exist at home. This element of the communist mindset has survived with great resilience until now, and finds expression in Bulgarian institutions and in politicians' claims about the "Bulgarian ethnic model" as some kind of a model of tolerance.
"A common reaction is to say that 'the Gypsies only have themselves to blame for their ghettoisation'," Bossanyi said. This refusal to accept any share in the blame is far from tolerant.
"The intolerance I have come across in Bulgaria is often latent and passive, not characterised by open conflict but by deeply entrenched prejudices kept under the surface in order to keep out of trouble. Like almost everywhere in the world, many of the media succumb to the temptation to increase their sales by writing what their readers feel most comfortable reading confirmation of their prejudices," Bossanyi said.
An unhealthy preoccupation with history has to a large extent been responsible for a great deal on intolerance in Bulgaria and its neighbouring countries. "Claiming to fulfil the need to improve the self-esteem of Bulgarians, nationalist historians have taken great pains to present Bulgarians as the victims of their neighbours or of the "great powers", Bossanyi said. He also added that it is striking that nationalist historians in almost all of Bulgaria's neighbouring countries also present their own ethnic group as the victims of their neighbours. This victim mentality is another way to avoid having to be self-critical and see things from other people's point of view. "It is an easy mentality for the media to sell," he said.
According to the Interethnic Initiative for Human Rights Foundation, Bulgarians have always been tolerant on a day-to-day level, they have always been good and friendly neighbours and have never experienced problems. Good neighbours bear nothing in mind against a Hassan, a Samuel or an Ivan, they will land a hand by giving salt or flour when a neighbour is in need, they will celebrate family holidays together.
Problems come only when Hassan turns up to be the boss at work. "Now, to have these good neighbourly relations preserved when we sit next to each other in the same room in a state institution is already a matter of state policy," said from the Interethnic Initiative for Human Rights Foundation. The representatives of minorities should start taking equal part in the resolution of cultural, social and economic processes in the country. Only then we will be able to step out of the simple scenario in which Bulgarians are so good.
BHC said that in several spheres the human rights situation marked a standstill, and in others like the right to asylum and freedom of expression a regress. In 2003, the European Court of Human Rights delivered 10 judgments against Bulgaria, some on problems solved in the judicial system, but some concerning problems still existing in law and in practice.
The BHC head finally said the number of human rights violations totalled several tens of thousands and the European Court on Human Rights has ruled on 10 cases against Bulgaria.
In conclusion, the BHC said that there were no significant changes in the situation of ethnic minorities in Bulgaria in 2003.
The Act on Protection from Discrimination, adopted in September, marks progress in the legal framework for protection from ethnic discrimination. It sets up a special body with effective powers to investigate and punish discrimination and turns the burden of proof of discrimination in accordance with Directive 2000/43 and Directive 2000/78 of the European Commission.
"In 2003, Roma continued to be subjected to discrimination in the spheres of employment, healthcare, education, housing, and the criminal justice system," the BHC said.
It was common practice not to let any people of Roma origin into public swimming pools, cafes or even cinemas, according to the foundation.
US ambassador James Pardew also praised Bulgaria for making much better progress in treatment of ethnic minorities than its Balkan neighbors.
"Bulgaria is much ahead in its ethnic tolerance in comparison to the other states on the Balkans," Pardew said in the southern town of Kardzhali on March 11, Bulgarian News Network reported.
Moreover, there had been progress shown in the tolerance for minorities in both the state and public field.
"Two Roma business centres will be set up, in Sofia and Bourgas, to provide consultations and ideas to Roma on how to launch their own business," Deputy Social Minister Roumen Simeonov said at a news conference in March. This particular project is part of the project for Roma Employment of the Social Ministry's JOBS initiative.
The BHC said that Roma access to health care had deteriorated compared to previous years when the health care system identified individuals with unpaid health insurance benefits and excluded them from health services. "Roma were seriously affected by this measure," BHC said.
But Bulgaria proved to be actively taking measures in its tolerance campaign with the adoption of the Action Plan on the Framework Programme for Equal Integration of Roma in Bulgarian Society, which specifies its engagements in several programme points.
Bulgaria has been criticised in the annual report of the Council of Europe's expert body on combating racism European Commission against Racism and Intolerance as a place with existing stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination against minority groups, particularly Roma, as well as against immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Bulgaria.
In the report examining racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism and intolerance in Bulgaria ECRI said that there had been positive developments. Meanwhile the reports detail continuing grounds for concern for the ECRI.
"There are still serious problems connected with the excessive use of firearms and force by the police against Roma, and ECRI emphasises the problem of segregation of Roma children in schools," the report said.
Reports on human practices, mistreatments and happenings of discrimination have created an image of Bulgaria that it has intolerance for otherness. However, Bulgarian National Television has a news bulletin in Turkish at 5.10pm.
Since March last year the international Roma newspaper Defacto has been distributed in Bulgaria and Roma news spread through the newly established, first in its kind in Bulgaria, Roma Information Agency (R.I.A) Defacto. Both the newspaper and the news in the website of R.I.A. are distributed in English and Bulgarian at www.defacto-bg.com. "Everything that we do is for the good of all Roma all over the world," said Toma Nikolaeff, director of Roma Information Agency R.I.A. Defacto and International Roma weekly newspaper Defacto. They aim at popularising and preserving the Roma culture, religion, identity, traditions and customs; to create contacts between all Roma in the world. According to Nikolaeff their aim is also to present Roma organisations, activists and to inform the Roma community for various events, initiatives, activities and others.
"The Bulgarian ethnic model does not work where the social and economic rights of minorities are concerned," Krustyu Petkov MP of Coalition for Bulgaria said in February during a roundtable discussion on Bulgaria's ethnopolitical prospects.
"Bulgaria has emerged as a typical example of a country with significant and growing ethnosocial and ethnoeconomic disparities," Petkov said. He said that as the phenomenon of poverty takes root in ethnic minority communities, they drift away from the social strata to which their members belonged and begin to form a new, ethnic subclass. "This widens the gap between ethnic minority groups and the predominant ethnos in Bulgaria."VELINA NACHEVA reports.
UK citizen Mark Bossanyi said this at the launch of a campaign entitled Racism - Spot it and Stop It, organised by the Interethnic Initiative for Human Rights Foundation around the annual European-wide Action Week Against Racism.
Since March 21 was declared International Day for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by the General Assembly of the United Nations as a reaction to the massacre of 70 demonstrators in Sharpeville, South Africa, in 1960, Bulgaria has become one of the thousands of places to commemorate the event and to take action against discrimination.
"Racism and ethnic discrimination exist in all countries around the globe. This could be said to be a flaw so typical of humans," Bossanyi said, adding that racism and discrimination are frequently hard to recognise.
Thus, this year's campaign headed by United for Intercultural Action initiating practices against racism, nationalism and fascism and supporting migrants and asylum seekers, aimed to raise awareness among people towards racism in everyday life. Anti-racist education is necessary to empower people to resist racist propaganda and furthermore the campaign targeted to make racism visible in order to erase it, including our own prejudice towards others.
"To be tolerant means to be ready to try to understand people who are different from oneself, to put ourselves in their situation and to recognise that the social environment in which we have grown up restricts our own ability to understand certain things about others. It requires a readiness to be self-critical," Bossanyi told The Echo. For him, to be 100 per cent convinced of our own tolerance is by definition intolerant, because it implies that "others" are to blame for any problems in our relations with them. As in a marriage, there is never only one side to blame. "Tolerance is not a genetically-determined quality, miraculously present in Bulgarians or in any other ethnic group without them having to put any effort into it," he said.
Defining, spotting and dealing with racism and discrimination is something that Bulgaria still needs to work on. "The development of human rights in Bulgaria is contradictory," the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC) said in their annual report on the state of human rights for 2003 which was presented at the end of last month.
Krassimir Kunev, chairperson of the BHC, said that there had been progress made with the laws adopted on protection against discrimination, and the law providing for the appointment of an ombudsman, as well as an instruction of the Interior Ministry giving detainees the right to have a lawyer, a doctor and to inform close relatives.
"Many Bulgarians tend to be self-critical when they compare their own society with Western European and American societies, whom they perceive to be 'more developed'. Whether that is true or not is highly debatable. But that self-criticism usually disappears when many Bulgarians compare themselves with Asians, Africans and minorities within Bulgaria," Bossanyi said.
According to the BHC, in 2003 human rights protection in Bulgaria achieved successes mainly in improvement of the legislative and institutional framework. The Act on Protection against Discrimination has been effective from January 1 and is a significant advancement in the sphere of combating discrimination is a number of areas of public life. It sets up an administrative body with effective powers to investigate and punish discriminatory acts and turns the burden of proof from the victim to the perpetrator. In May, Parliament adopted the Ombudsman Act (effective from January 1), which sets up a formal system of advocacy in cases when actions and inactions of state or municipal organs violate the rights and freedoms of individuals.
Irrespective of its progress in terms of discrimination practices and tolerance Bulgaria made history at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) when it was found guilty of violating Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
"This has become a precedent in the history of Strasbourg court," Kunev told The Echo. In the Nachova vs Bulgaria Case, ECHR passed its first judgment citing Article 14 providing for the prohibition of discrimination.
Michael Head of the Council of Europe's committee against racism said that this was an unprecedented judgment. Many judgments had been passed against Council of Europe states for human rights violations but none had been for discrimination.
This particular judgment will have serious consequences for all Council of Europe countries.
Bossanyi compared levels of tolerance in the two countries in which he has lived for over nine years.
According to Bossanyi, the Race Relations Act became law in the UK in 1976 and was the first serious British legislation against discrimination. Until then overt racism was fairly common, and still occurs now. The legislation set standards that made it socially unacceptable or offensive to express racist or discriminatory views. This has had a definite effect on society in the past 28 years and a significant proportion of people in the country genuinely understand what tolerance means.
"Unfortunately, among some sections of British society, it is still not uncommon to detect a belief that despite everything, British society is the fairest, the most democratic, the most developed," Bossanyi said. Among these people, a veneer of tolerance masks a deep-seated attitude of superiority and is very patronising. There is still a fairly common self-congratulatory belief that British colonial rule was somehow "fairer" than the rule of other colonial powers or that of the newly-independent colonies, he said.
British legislation against racism is not effective enough in restricting the practices of the gutter press (the "yellow" newspapers, as they are called in Bulgaria) to increase their sales by inciting intolerance and hatred against immigrants, usually based on spurious arguments and misleading statistics, Bossanyi said. This problem is becoming increasingly serious and is generating an environment in which the public fails to object to unacceptable practices to restrict immigration.
"In Bulgaria, the first specific law against discrimination came into force at the beginning of this year. It was adopted not because the political elite considered it desirable, but because it is one of the requirements for EU accession," Bossanyi said. Parliament adopted it very reluctantly, because like a huge majority of institutions in Bulgaria, the prevailing belief is that "there cannot be ethnic discrimination in Bulgaria because Bulgarians are tolerant".
For Bossanyi the Communist authorities of 1944-1989 spoke of racism as something unique to the West, where they "beat Negroes", and that, since communist society is almost perfect, racism and discrimination could not possibly exist at home. This element of the communist mindset has survived with great resilience until now, and finds expression in Bulgarian institutions and in politicians' claims about the "Bulgarian ethnic model" as some kind of a model of tolerance.
"A common reaction is to say that 'the Gypsies only have themselves to blame for their ghettoisation'," Bossanyi said. This refusal to accept any share in the blame is far from tolerant.
"The intolerance I have come across in Bulgaria is often latent and passive, not characterised by open conflict but by deeply entrenched prejudices kept under the surface in order to keep out of trouble. Like almost everywhere in the world, many of the media succumb to the temptation to increase their sales by writing what their readers feel most comfortable reading confirmation of their prejudices," Bossanyi said.
An unhealthy preoccupation with history has to a large extent been responsible for a great deal on intolerance in Bulgaria and its neighbouring countries. "Claiming to fulfil the need to improve the self-esteem of Bulgarians, nationalist historians have taken great pains to present Bulgarians as the victims of their neighbours or of the "great powers", Bossanyi said. He also added that it is striking that nationalist historians in almost all of Bulgaria's neighbouring countries also present their own ethnic group as the victims of their neighbours. This victim mentality is another way to avoid having to be self-critical and see things from other people's point of view. "It is an easy mentality for the media to sell," he said.
According to the Interethnic Initiative for Human Rights Foundation, Bulgarians have always been tolerant on a day-to-day level, they have always been good and friendly neighbours and have never experienced problems. Good neighbours bear nothing in mind against a Hassan, a Samuel or an Ivan, they will land a hand by giving salt or flour when a neighbour is in need, they will celebrate family holidays together.
Problems come only when Hassan turns up to be the boss at work. "Now, to have these good neighbourly relations preserved when we sit next to each other in the same room in a state institution is already a matter of state policy," said from the Interethnic Initiative for Human Rights Foundation. The representatives of minorities should start taking equal part in the resolution of cultural, social and economic processes in the country. Only then we will be able to step out of the simple scenario in which Bulgarians are so good.
BHC said that in several spheres the human rights situation marked a standstill, and in others like the right to asylum and freedom of expression a regress. In 2003, the European Court of Human Rights delivered 10 judgments against Bulgaria, some on problems solved in the judicial system, but some concerning problems still existing in law and in practice.
The BHC head finally said the number of human rights violations totalled several tens of thousands and the European Court on Human Rights has ruled on 10 cases against Bulgaria.
In conclusion, the BHC said that there were no significant changes in the situation of ethnic minorities in Bulgaria in 2003.
The Act on Protection from Discrimination, adopted in September, marks progress in the legal framework for protection from ethnic discrimination. It sets up a special body with effective powers to investigate and punish discrimination and turns the burden of proof of discrimination in accordance with Directive 2000/43 and Directive 2000/78 of the European Commission.
"In 2003, Roma continued to be subjected to discrimination in the spheres of employment, healthcare, education, housing, and the criminal justice system," the BHC said.
It was common practice not to let any people of Roma origin into public swimming pools, cafes or even cinemas, according to the foundation.
US ambassador James Pardew also praised Bulgaria for making much better progress in treatment of ethnic minorities than its Balkan neighbors.
"Bulgaria is much ahead in its ethnic tolerance in comparison to the other states on the Balkans," Pardew said in the southern town of Kardzhali on March 11, Bulgarian News Network reported.
Moreover, there had been progress shown in the tolerance for minorities in both the state and public field.
"Two Roma business centres will be set up, in Sofia and Bourgas, to provide consultations and ideas to Roma on how to launch their own business," Deputy Social Minister Roumen Simeonov said at a news conference in March. This particular project is part of the project for Roma Employment of the Social Ministry's JOBS initiative.
The BHC said that Roma access to health care had deteriorated compared to previous years when the health care system identified individuals with unpaid health insurance benefits and excluded them from health services. "Roma were seriously affected by this measure," BHC said.
But Bulgaria proved to be actively taking measures in its tolerance campaign with the adoption of the Action Plan on the Framework Programme for Equal Integration of Roma in Bulgarian Society, which specifies its engagements in several programme points.
Bulgaria has been criticised in the annual report of the Council of Europe's expert body on combating racism European Commission against Racism and Intolerance as a place with existing stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination against minority groups, particularly Roma, as well as against immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Bulgaria.
In the report examining racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism and intolerance in Bulgaria ECRI said that there had been positive developments. Meanwhile the reports detail continuing grounds for concern for the ECRI.
"There are still serious problems connected with the excessive use of firearms and force by the police against Roma, and ECRI emphasises the problem of segregation of Roma children in schools," the report said.
Reports on human practices, mistreatments and happenings of discrimination have created an image of Bulgaria that it has intolerance for otherness. However, Bulgarian National Television has a news bulletin in Turkish at 5.10pm.
Since March last year the international Roma newspaper Defacto has been distributed in Bulgaria and Roma news spread through the newly established, first in its kind in Bulgaria, Roma Information Agency (R.I.A) Defacto. Both the newspaper and the news in the website of R.I.A. are distributed in English and Bulgarian at www.defacto-bg.com. "Everything that we do is for the good of all Roma all over the world," said Toma Nikolaeff, director of Roma Information Agency R.I.A. Defacto and International Roma weekly newspaper Defacto. They aim at popularising and preserving the Roma culture, religion, identity, traditions and customs; to create contacts between all Roma in the world. According to Nikolaeff their aim is also to present Roma organisations, activists and to inform the Roma community for various events, initiatives, activities and others.
"The Bulgarian ethnic model does not work where the social and economic rights of minorities are concerned," Krustyu Petkov MP of Coalition for Bulgaria said in February during a roundtable discussion on Bulgaria's ethnopolitical prospects.
"Bulgaria has emerged as a typical example of a country with significant and growing ethnosocial and ethnoeconomic disparities," Petkov said. He said that as the phenomenon of poverty takes root in ethnic minority communities, they drift away from the social strata to which their members belonged and begin to form a new, ethnic subclass. "This widens the gap between ethnic minority groups and the predominant ethnos in Bulgaria."VELINA NACHEVA reports.
