A lot has changed for Bulgaria\u2019s Roma during the 70 years since Anka Kostov was born. As a child, her family traveled from town to town with other Roma, also known as Gypsies, earning their way with everything from shoeing horses to telling fortunes. It was the way Roma had lived for centuries, but it came to an end when the Bulgarian Communist Party decided to outlaw nomadism in 1958. Her family was forced to settle down in Burgas, a fishing port and industrial city along the Black Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Historians call this forced sedentarization the \u201cGreat Halt.\u201d Similar programs were launched by communist governments in Romania, Checkoslvakia, and Poland in an attempt to do away with separate ethnic and national identities. The Roma were pushed to assimilate, but long-standing cultural differences\u2013and prejudices\u2013don\u2019t disappear overnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The government made assimilation attractive in that it provided steady employment and schooling, something many Roma today look back on with fondness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDuring communism we had money, food and jobs. The children all went to school. We thought only people in the western world had to look for food in the trash, but now we have to do that ourselves,\u201d said Ms. Kostov, who spends her days searching for food and recyclable materials in dumpsters around the city. She mostly searches in the suburbs, saying the police hassle her in the center of town where the tourists might see her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ganime Makmovida lives on the same dirt street as Ms. Kostov in the Gorno Ezerovo neighborhood. Ms. Makmovida, 68, is a member of the United Methodist Church. She worked as a cleaning lady under communism and still earns a very small pension today. But when the city decided to knock down her simple home to build a new road, she moved into her children\u2019s already crowded house. She hates going out to scavenge, because it exposes her to harsh discrimination. Despite the communists\u2019 best efforts at constructing a homogeneous state, the taunts shouted at the Roma by other Bulgarians belie the success of decades of racial engineering. And for Ms. Makmovide, even after a lifetime of discrimination, the words still sting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey hate us. They hate the Roma, because we are different. We have no opportunities to work, so we go to the city to look for food, going from trash bin to trash bin, and the people are uncomfortable when they see us. Our presence makes them uncomfortable. Sometimes they try to catch us and do violence against us, and other times they sic their dogs on us and we have to run,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another neighbor, Yanka Petronovah, says when the Roma are yelled at, they keep quiet, as it could be dangerous to respond. \u201cWe keep silent. Otherwise they become more aggressive and violent. We just carry our pain inside,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elastic identity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Ms. Petronovah may be silent, but she\u2019s unbent. \u201cDespite all of that mistreatment, we are proud to be Roma. I\u2019m proud because God made me this way. But it\u2019s difficult. They\u2019ve destroyed several of my houses, and today my husband and I live in a tent. We are ten who live in it, and no one has work. It\u2019s a difficult time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s precisely that difficulty that has led many Roma in Bulgaria to pretend to be something else. Pursuing racial anonymity, significant numbers of Roma have recast themselves as \u201cTurkish-speaking Bulgarians\u201d or as a \u201cRomanian-speaking minority group.\u201d With skin that is usually darker than most Bulgarians, and facial features that can be distinctive, this self-misrepresentation was the only way to survive in a society which has developed extreme hatred for the Roma. And it\u2019s not a new phenomenon; the Roma\u2019s elastic sense of identity has proved useful for centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are in fact Roma. Yet the Roma are usually at the edge of society, and society denies the Roma people. Their attitude is that the Roma are bad. So the majority of Roma claim to be something else, like Bulgarians or Turks or Romanians, not Roma at all,\u201d said Gulten Murat, a 60-year old woman in Dobric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Demir Sandev, a 57-year old Turkish-speaking Roma man who recycles scrap for a living in the city of Varna, says pretending to be someone else does little good. \u201cSometimes people claim they are Bulgarians simply because that\u2019s the country where they live. But it\u2019s obvious, you can see that some people are Roma. I prefer to say openly that I am Roma, because they\u2019re going to beat me anyway,\u201d said Mr. Sandev, a United Methodist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cultural morphing in order to survive in Bulgaria\u2019s racist society often focuses on language. Thus by speaking a different language than Romani, the Roma somehow become not Roma, at least to outsiders. But the Rev. Daniel Topalski, superintendent of the United Methodist Church in Bulgaria and Romania, says that altered language has wrought deeper cultural changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLanguage is an expression of a particular way of thinking, a particular mentality or philosophy of life. It\u2019s a real expression of a people\u2019s reality, but language can also change that reality. God said something, and it happened. And we were made in that same image. So through the acceptance of the Turkish or Romanian language, the Roma and Gypsy people change their own mentality, step by step. They learned that if they presented themselves in a different way, they would be treated better. But they in fact also changed as a result,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Topalski suggests that Roma who have self-identified as Turkish, for example, are usually more industrious. He says that Turkish-speaking Roma ministers in the church are \u201cmore effective, better organized and have clearer goals about their ministries, while the Bulgarian-speaking among them are more like us, sometimes lazy and not very efficient and without very clear goals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several dozen families of the \u201cRomanian-speaking minority\u201d live in the village of Staro Oriahovo. Like one historic subgroup of Roma, they earn their living gathering herbs and mushrooms in the fields and forest. Yet they don\u2019t want to be confused with the Roma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFrom the Bulgarians\u2019 perspective, we are also Gypsies, but we disagree. There are a lot of minority groups, yet the Bulgarians lump us all together as Gypsies,\u201d said Stiliyana Vassileva.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Janko Jankov, the United Methodist local pastor in the village, there are clear differences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Roma people have a different mentality. They like to steal and do other illegal things. It\u2019s in their blood. The Romanian-speaking population is different. We are people who like to work and earn our money not by stealing but by collecting herbs and mushrooms. We understand very well that the respect of others towards us depends on our behavior. We want to be an equal part of this society and to behave as do all the others,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet when interviewed along with several members of his congregation, Mr. Jankov admitted common historic roots. \u201cWe were a Gypsy tribe and when we came to Romania many centuries ago, we learned their language trying to be like them. We worked as miners there, and when we came to Bulgaria became known for the wooden plates we produced. To be honest, we are Romanian-speaking Gypsies,\u201d he said, provoking a howl of outrage from several of his parishioners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roma renamed<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The government has encouraged such identity shifts for various minority groups at several points in Bulgaria\u2019s history. In the case of the Roma, the communists at least allowed them to officially exist for a while; the 1947 Constitution guaranteed them status as an officially-recognized national minority and protected their language. Such privileges were scrapped in the revised Constitution of 1971, however, when everyone in the country was \u201cmade equal,\u201d like it or not. From 1978 on, no official mention could be made of the Roma in the media. Eventually, in 1984 the Communist Party even banned the Romani language and Roma music from the country. That lasted until socialism fell apart at the end of 1989.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One product of Bulgaria\u2019s formal rejection of ethnicity was to change people\u2019s names. Those with Turkish or Roma names, for example, woke up one morning with new Bulgarian names provided by the state. The changeover was so complete that even the names chiseled on tombstones were altered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus Gulten Murat became Galena Ilieva, the name that today appears on her official identity card.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was one of the stupidest things the government did,\u201d she said. \u201cThey did many good things. During communism the police came to make the kids go to school. Everyone had a job, and at work we treated each other well. Yet they never really explained why they changed our names, and I still don\u2019t think they had the right,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the collapse of communism people could get their old names back, provided they paid a fee. Ms. Murat hasn\u2019t done so, and says she\u2019s now accustomed to having both names. Two of her children changed back to their Turkish\/Roma names, while two other children decided to retain their Bulgarian names.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Varna, Mehmed Ramadan Mehmed\u2013whose Islamic name suggests things weren\u2019t all that different during almost five centuries of Turkish rule\u2013doesn\u2019t have an identity card, and can\u2019t get one because he doesn\u2019t have a permanent address. \u201cWhenever I go to ask about an ID card, they ask for my property papers. I don\u2019t have any, so they tell me to go away,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Ramadan Mehmed is the keyboardist at the neighborhood\u2019s United Methodist Church. His pastor, Mehmed Stefanov, says the lack of identification starts a chain of exclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWithout an ID, there\u2019s no work or social assistance, because without an ID you are nobody. You need an address certificate to get an ID, but if your house isn\u2019t legal, you can\u2019t get a certificate. Without an ID, you can\u2019t get married. If you can\u2019t get married, your children aren\u2019t legal either, so they can\u2019t go to school. Children want to go to school, however, so we\u2019ve held classes in the church, but we had to stop for lack of funds,\u201d the pastor said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Ramadan Mehmed and his wife Feride (who has an official ID but it dubs her Frosko, a Bulgarian name) have been forced by anti-Roma violence to move several times in recent years. In 2011, they were chased out of their home in another Varna neighborhood when a right-wing nationalistic party, spouting dire warnings about apocalyptic Roma birth rates, called for the destruction of \u201cRoma ghettoes.\u201d It teamed up with skinheads and motorcycle gang members, known locally as \u201crockers,\u201d to physically drive Roma families out of their homes in informal squatter settlements. The violence was encouraged on SKAT, a television channel with links to Ataka<\/em>\u2013the far-right nationalist Attack Political Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey came at midnight, and were very well organized. It was the rockers and the police, cooperating together. They beat me. We had to flee for our lives,\u201d said Mr. Ramadan Mehmed. \u201cIt happened in many places.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The anti-Roma rioters, often shouting slogans like \u201cGypsies into soap\u201d and \u201cTurks under the knife,\u201d were spurred into action when a family member of Kiril Rashkov, a Roma crime boss known widely as \u201cTsar Kiro,\u201d ran a minibus over a white Bulgarian, killing him. Post-communist Bulgaria has more than its share of local crime bosses, and the government has faced years of criticism from the European Union for failing to reform its ineffective judicial system and for not prosecuting any high-level crime figures or corrupt state officials. Popular anger about the corruption runs deep, and when mixed with ethnic hatred, the traffic death sparked a conflagration in which the violence grew so bad that the police were eventually forced to switch sides and protect the Roma communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Ramadan Mehmed and his wife and children took refuge in the United Methodist Church building, where they stayed for a year before moving into a small house down the hill. They pay 50 Bulgarian lev<\/em> a month, about $35, an amount that\u2019s difficult to pay on their earnings from recycling. They worry they\u2019ll soon be chased out again, given rumors that a wealthy business consortium has bought the land and plans to develop it into upscale houses and offices. \u201cWe\u2019d like to find a better place to live, but the only places we can afford are also illegal,\u201d said Mr. Ramadan Mehmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2012 the European Court of Human Rights, in what Amnesty International called a \u201clandmark judgment,\u201d ruled that the planned eviction of several Roma families from an established community outside of Sofia, the country\u2019s capital, violated their right to life. Despite the government\u2019s argument that the settlements\u2019 makeshift homes lacked building permits, were unsafe and unhygienic, the Court ordered Bulgaria to change its eviction law to insure that the rights of vulnerable populations, especially the elderly and children, were protected during such removals. It was a small legal victory for the Roma, but paled by comparison to the mounting racism in Bulgaria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNone of the girls has come back\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The abject poverty of the Roma in Bulgaria has pushed some to seek a better life in western Europe, a change in scenery facilitated by Bulgaria\u2019s admission to the European Union in 2007. But in Germany, France, Italy and elsewhere, many have often found the same racist attitudes they thought they left behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some young Roma women have gone west as victims of trafficking. Mr. Stefanov says three female members of his church, ages 17 and 18, were essentially sold by their families to traffickers. \u201cIf there\u2019s no work, the families are tempted by this. The government supports this by not doing anything to stop it. We talked with the police and the local government, but got nowhere. And none of the girls has come back,\u201d he said. The congregation would like to advocate more forcefully around trafficking issues, but the pastor says most families are too busy just surviving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Dobric, Ms. Murat and other members of the United Methodist congregation started a children\u2019s feeding program in 2011. Every day as many as 40 children come to the church for a simple meal. \u201cWhen we have meat or dessert, there are even more kids,\u201d Ms. Murat said. \u201cSomehow they just know without us having to say anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The congregation, whose members are all poor themselves, finances the project without any outside help. It all started, Ms. Murat says, when their pastor, Mr. Stefanov, who is also pastor of the Roma congregation in Varna, and his wife used some of their own money to prepare a meal for hungry children. Soon it was the congregation\u2019s project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe families here are so poor that many of the children don\u2019t go to school because their families have no money for clothes and school supplies. Some of their parents are in prison. I\u2019d like to start an educational project for them, for both children and adults. They\u2019re illiterate, so if they get sick and go to the hospital, they don\u2019t even know which door to knock on because they can\u2019t read,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Topalski, the superintendent, says the ministries of Roma congregations are a model for the larger church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey are poor, and they sacrifice from their very limited resources. It\u2019s amazing,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are the real church. The church is called to be close to the people, the people in need in its neighborhood. And these people are doing just that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paul Jeffrey is a United Methodist missionary and senior correspondent for response.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Paul Jeffrey Published in response magazine May 2013. A lot has changed for Bulgaria\u2019s Roma during the 70 years since Anka Kostov was born. As a child, her family traveled from town to town with other Roma, also known as Gypsies, earning their way with everything from shoeing horses to telling fortunes. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4340"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4340"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4357,"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4340\/revisions\/4357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/bulgaria2012jeffrey-213-950x783.jpg\")
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