POLICE VIOLENCE AGAINST ROMAS IN PAZARDZHIK
Pazardzhik is a city of about 82,000 inhabitants, 120 kilometers East of Sofia and 30 kilometers West of Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second largest city.
The local Roma community numbers about 24,000 persons. Most of them are Muslims, some insisting on a strong Turkish identity. According to rough estimates, unemployment among Roma persons of working age is at present about 80%.
This is the social background of a story beginning with five young Romas stealing cherries from a tree and ending with police raids of extraordinary brutality against an entire Roma neighborhood.
When five Roma men tried to steal cherries from an orchard, they were roughly chased away by local police shooting in the air. The excessive action of the police resulted in a crowd of about 200 Romas attacking the police with stones. The latter started shooting. Three policemen were injured by stones, two Romas were shot (one of them in the hip).
At about 4 A.M. on June 29, strong police forces (local and from a neighbor town) surrounded the Roma community. The policemen carried submachine guns and lead dogs. The crack-down was ordered by the Regional Director of Internal Affairs in Pazardzhik as a "passport check and search for arms. The permission of the Chief secretary of the Interrior Ministry was also secured. First, all persons found on the streets were checked and searched. Later police started searching homes, breaking the windows and doors of every house, regardless of whether there was a familiy inside or not. Systematically the furniture was destroyed and all money found was 'confiscated' (no documents were given to the owners).
During the whole operation inhabitants (innocent of any crime and including women, childern and aged persons) were badly beaten and cursed at with discriminatory comments against the Roma people. Young women and girls were sexually harrassed. The inhabitants of one house were stood up against its wall "in order to be shot", as the policemen told them. They were made to stand there and believe that they were to all die while their house was "searched" in the above manner. An old woman was forced under her bed, while policemen jumped up and down on the bed above her, listening to her cries.
One Roma man's leg was broken with a hammer in the presence of his wife and his childern. Another man was taken to hospital in a stage of commotion, after being tied and beaten in the street for everyone to see. Romas with lighter injuries were turned away from a hospital by policemen at the door.
No firearms were found. One case of negligible passport irregularity was unearthed. A machete and 20 kitchen knives were confiscated.
The day after, a protest rally staged by the Roma community was dispersed by the police. Heavily armed policemen making discriminatory comments patrolled the neighborhood. Local administrators verbally abused Romas. During the week following the pogrom-like events, Romas were denied access to restaurants and cafes in the center of the city. Passport checks were made constantly and people were harassed.
The Roma witnesses to these acts, especially women and children, are as a result in a state of deep stress. Parents are reporting of children who can not sleep at night, who have begun to stammer or to wet themselves.
Krassimir Kanev
Sources: official police press releases and eye-witness accounts recorded by K.Kanev and his colleagues.