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by darin
First off, I would like to congratulate hitchhiker on an excellent diary entry. I see it provoked enough interest to be put on the front page, which is excellent!
But as a student majoring in journalism I must criticize his entry for addressing mostly the position of the gypsies in the Bulgarian society and not properly presenting the side of the majority of the Bulgarians (even if the gypsies are a minority in Bulgaria, the position of the majority matters just as much). I will try to provide a counter argument to hitchhiker’s diary.
Just like him, I am also a Bulgarian, but my point of view is that of criticizing the gypsy minority.
In short, Bulgaria has two minorities: Turks (living in Bulgaria since the Ottoman yoke and even before that) and gypsies. The Turkish population is represented in the Bulgarian parliament by MFR, The Movement for Freedoms and Rights, which is widely regarded as the Turkish party (although according to article 11 of the Bulgarian constitution, an ethnically based political party can not legally exist). Part of the MFR votes come from the gypsy population, assuring that they will be represented in parliament as well. Currently there is TV news in Turkish as well. Even though the Turks are still regarded as our former enemies (the Ottoman yoke), Bulgarians accept them much better than gypsies. The cultural gap between Bulgarians and Turks is not small, but both Bulgarians and Turks barely relate to the culture of the gypsies. There is a reason why gypsies are hated and the reason is their specific cultural heritage and the recent history of Bulgaria. During the communist regime, which lasted for about 45 years and ended in 1989, the gypsy community was strongly oppressed by the Todor Jivkov government. A good example of the time would be the city of Burgas, situated on the Black Sea coast. Gypsies were forced to live in ghettos located near the skirts of the cities and were used for low qualified jobs. At a certain point, gypsies were "encouraged" by the police (then “Milicia”) not to leave their ghetto and enter the city as rarely as possible. Every morning several trucks would transport the gypsies in town, before anyone was awake, so they can clean the city, and then transport them back before they could disturb anyone. The Milicia were not very fond of gypsies either – any situation would be dealt with by starting with the individuals with the darkest complexion. It is important to note, that during those years, as well as today, all Bulgarian citizens (everyone with a Bulgarian residence – Bulgarians, Turks and gypsies) were legally required to go to grade school. Then the communist regime fell and oppressed gypsies, whose jobs were assured by the communist government, were left unemployed and uneducated. The quickest way to earn some cash was by stealing – pick pocketing, braking into apartments (have in mind that during communist time the crime levels were really low and people usually never locked their doors; today most houses and apartments have metal doors with several locks), and most benefited, as well as today actually, from social welfare (they are unemployed and receive money for their increasingly large families). The cultural gap quickly widened, because of the gypsies’ trying to earn money the alternative way. Most of the gypsies stopped going to school, as they were quickly employed in their “family business”. Here is an excerpt from a short article, named “Bulgarian Roma: The Multiplication of Misery”, written by Worldpress correspondent Plamen Petrov.
I will follow hitchhiker’s lead and give you several examples from my personal experience with gypsies, during the last 15 years. I believe the stories will serve the purpose of describing the current situation. As a 10-year-old kid, I was stopped on the street by a gypsy, who asked me how far I live. I never expected to be attacked by someone on the street (see what happens when communism leaves you by surprise?) and idiotically told him I live quite far away. Then he demanded my cash – I refused him and ran to the closest building and pressed all the ring bell buttons. He came to me, hit me in the stomach and left running. I never forgot that lesson. Several years later, we managed to make enough money to open a shop in my home city of Burgas. The shop was robbed on a daily basis by gypsies (and clients were pick pocketed), but Bulgarians adapted fast to the situation and as soon as someone saw a gypsy running down the street with clothes in his hands – he would stop him with a fast kick. It was like a mini-war, which lasted for seven or eight years during the nineties. Our shop was robbed three times in the period of two years. They would use small gypsies to get into an opening they cut in the shop’s side, and then throw out everything that would fit through the hole. At some point the police managed to get two of the gypsies, while they were robbing our shop for the forth time (we weren’t the only ones robbed, all the shops in the center of the city were hit at different moments in time). On the next day they asked for my mother to go there, so she can confirm the stolen goods were ours. Because of the systematic robbing of our shops, she couldn’t stand gypsies, but when she came back her story shocked me horribly. They asked her to go to the interrogation room – the two gypsies were there already, one of them wearing a pullover from our shop (they usually try to put as many clothes on and as fast as possible, so they don’t seem as if they are stolen). One of the policemen would ask a question, and then hit the gypsy, no matter whether he was lying or admitting to the crime. After the first several times my mother asked them to stop (she just wanted the goods back), but they went on for twenty minutes – at the end one of the policemen took off the blood-soaked pullover from the gypsy and gave it to my mother, whom they forced to stay there for the whole time. Even though she despised gypsies, she was even angrier at the policemen.
My conclusion would be that as long as gypsies are unwilling to educate and prefer to earn money the easy way, Bulgarians will treat them as they do right now. I have already met a couple of gypsies that are graduating from a university, and I have to say thar I am extremely impressed with their desire to work as part of the system, not against it. Although there will always be Bulgarians and Turks that will occasionally say “Oh, no, we are educating the criminals now!” |
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Bulgarian Gypsies (Counter Argument)! | 176 comments (176 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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