Roma teenage killing sparks tension in Bulgaria

The brutal death of a Roma teenager sparked fresh tension in Bulgaria Wednesday with some 1,000 gypsies protesting in the streets of the western town of Samokov, police and Roma leaders told AFP.

On Tuesday, "a 17-year-old Roma boy was beaten to death by hooligans. The victim… did not oppose any force and this cost him his life," Euroroma party leader Tsvetelin Kanchev told AFP.

Euroroma is Bulgaria’s biggest political party engaged with Roma problems and issues.

The interior ministry confirmed in a statement Wednesday that "a 17-year-old boy was killed in a brawl in Samokov."
This is "the fifth incident in seven years that has ended with the killing of a Roma in Samokov," Kanchev said.

It is also the latest in a spate of ethnic feuds which began ten days ago, when a Roma boy was badly injured by hooligans in a predominantly gypsy-populated neighbourhood of Sofia.

Some 200 Roma men sought revenge by attacking a Bulgarian cafe in the same neighbourhood, beating four clients and breaking tables and chairs.

A crowd of gypsies armed with knives and table legs to use as bats then took to the streets but police prevented further clashes.
According to Antonina Zhelyazkova, of the Sofia centre for minority studies: "Animosity has always existed between the Roma and the other ethnic groups in Bulgaria, mainly fed by prejudice."

She added: "Tension is deliberately stirred by politicians now ahead of the municipal elections in October."
A small nationalist party, the Bulgarian People’s Union, even announced the formation this week of a paramilitary anti-Roma guard.

Its first members posed on television in uniforms reminiscent those worn by the Nazis and called for Bulgarians to join in "defending our families, property and lives from the gypsy invasions."

Bulgaria’s Roma community, estimated at about 650,000 or nine percent of the country’s population, lives for the most part in poverty, with 80 percent of them unemployed.