At the beginning of this year, an incident occurred between a Bulgarian soldier and two young Roma from the village of Vojvodina in southern Bulgaria, which resulted in the demolition of illegally constructed buildings in the Roma settlement.
After the incident, the juveniles were arrested, and the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Krasimir Karakachanov said that "Roma are scarce about the coexistence that provokes ethnic hatred".
In response, hundreds of Roma this week protested in front of the Government of Bulgaria and, as announced, the attendees will not retreat until Karakachanov went out and publicly apologized for hate speech against Roma.
"Today we are a thousand, but another time we gather we will be hundreds of thousands," one of the protesters says. According to his words, Karakachanov will have to be punished for hate speech, and he is due to conduct an investigation into the events in Vojvodina because the Bulgarian soldier was not on official duty during the incident.
As stated on the Roma Antidiscrimination Network website on January 19, a protest in Brussels is scheduled, aimed at increasing violence against Roma in Bulgaria and other European countries.
At the same time, it is planned that IRU together with the OSCE, ERTF and other organizations will make meetings with the Bulgarian state representatives and discuss this situation
