Bulgaria Marks International Roma Day

A number of events dedicated to the International Roma Day (April 8) will take place in Bulgaria on Tuesday.

The Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev is going to meet with notable representatives of the Roma community at the Council of Ministers in Sofia. No press conference has been scheduled after the event.

A round table on the topic "The European Policy towards the Roma and Bulgaria’s Place in It" will take place at the EU Information Center in the Bulgarian capital. The Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Policy Baki Hyuseinov, who is also the national coordinator of the international initiative "Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015", will be one of the participants.

A memorial tablet honoring the Roma, who perished in the Nazi Holocaust, was opened Tuesday morning in the town of Botevgrad, Sofia District, by the town mayor Georgi Georgiev, and the leader of the EVROROMA party Tsvetelin Kanchev, who is notorious for having been sentenced for blackmailing and beating.

The Organization of Bulgarian Jews "Shalom" supported the remembrance of the hundreds of thousands of Roma, who were killed in the Nazi death camps by sending a letter to the Municipality of the Danube town of Lom, and the "Roma Lom" Foundation.

A memorial plate was opened in the town of Lom on March 20, 2008, at the port from where the 11 000 Jews from Macedonia and Thrace were deported to the Treblinka camp during World War II.

The new center of the Roma Regional Development Foundation was opened in the second largest Bulgarian city of Plovdiv. The initiative was part of the project "Creating Centers for Supporting the Crafts in Plovdiv", which is financed by the EU PHARE program.

On April 8, 1971, the first world Roma congress took place in London, UK, in order to unite and organize the international Roma movements, and to attract the attention of the international community. Ever since the day has been celebrated as the International Roma Day.