Roma Standing Conference has been in close contact with more than 100 families forced to leave their homes by organized mobs in Gabrovo. Today, in our visit to these families, we experienced unbearable sense of fear, terror, and intimidation, and the drama of their lives is becoming an enormous human tragedy.

Without hope, knowing that their current difficulties are nearly impossible to surmount. Two of the most dispossessed families remained without homes as the mobs burnt them in the brutal attack. This situation is beneath human dignity and unacceptable for Europe in the 21st century.

Despite all this, Roma families demonstrated incredible determination to go back to their homes and normal lives. They want their innocent children’s to go back to school and they want back to their workplaces.

At the same time, non-Roma peers in Gabrovo continued encouraging outrageous hatred and violence in their massive protest yesterday. The organizers are scapegoating Roma as privileged minority in Bulgaria that is responsible for Bulgarian miserable living conditions.

Most of them are ignorant to accept the reality that Roma have nothing to do with the weak integrity and governance of the main public institutions, directly causing miserable living conditions for all Bulgarians, Roma included.

Link: https://romastandingconference.org/roma-in-gabrovo-collateral-damage-between-two-fires/

After two people of Roma descent beat a shopkeeper on April 7, on Thursday a second protest was held in Gabrovo

Nine people were detained in Gabrovo late yesterday, while one police officer suffered a slight injury, National Police General Directorate head Hristo Terziyski said at a briefing in Gabrovo, Focus News Agency reports.

The protest, which drew 800-900 people, was followed by processions in the city centre where the police detained four young people throwing stones and firecrackers, and three of them will face pre-trial proceedings.

Another person was detained without identity papers, and four others – in connection with a fire on the top of an uninhabited building. This case will be investigated, Terziyski said.

Furthermore, a police officer suffered a slight injury and received medical care. Two other people went to the emergency medical centre but have not complained to the police thus far.

Gabrovo Mayor Tanya Hristova said mass inspections into one’s place of residence would continue indefinitely. She called on political parties to avoid stirring up ethnic tensions.