Let’s Not Stay Silent for the Roma

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Maria Metodieva, Director Institutional Development;

Ognyan Isaev, Director Educational Achievement;

Trust for Social Achievement Foundation

Silence—punishing, relentless, capable of driving one to the edge of madness. On the eve of Easter 2025, nearly 200 souls who once called a  suburb of Sofia their home awoke not to birdsong or the promise of sunrise, but to the roar of excavators and the shouts of riot police. In minutes, decades of lives, family histories and children’s laughter were reduced to rubble. Today, only a single tent stands among the debris—a fragile testament to what was lost.

We arrived with what little we could offer: tents, tarpaulins, blankets to shelter the most vulnerable. In that lone makeshift refuge lay a young expectant mother—beautiful, shy, worn thin by fear. Her swollen feet betrayed sleepless nights spent upright in a chair, her body straining with the weight of new life. She was ready to bring her child into a world that had already shown him cruelty: a world where the cries of a racist mob declared she had no right even to lie down.

Days have passed since that dawn raid. Police dragged mothers, fathers, children, elders and the infirm from homes they occupied for generations—homes built by their own hands and by Roma labor conscripted under successive governments. They were told to gather their meager belongings and leave, as if torn from a story that mattered. But how you can gather your entire life in two hands? Walls that sheltered grandparents, gave children sanctuary, and recorded family milestones came down in an instant. Only memories and shattered brick remained.

Local authorities had pledged otherwise. Less than two weeks earlier, the mayor of Ilinden—a medical doctor sworn to preserve life—assured civil society organizations that no demolition would occur until alternative housing was secured. It was a promise made to placate reporters, a lie delivered with a smile. No shelter was offered. No plan was in place. The Sofia governor remained silent, the national government absent. Each empowered figure—church leaders, political parties, media outlets—turned away, celebrating Easter while families shivered in the cold rain.

This is not merely moral failure; it is a breach of law. The European Court of Human Rights issued an interim order to protect these families—a legal obligation that supersedes national decrees. Yet the mayor of Ilinden, the mayor of Sofia, and the Bulgarian state chose to ignore it. They barred justice in deference to private interests, trampling human rights under bureaucratic indifference.

For days district mayors have abdicated their responsibilities, while the mayor of the Ilinden district – who should be facing legal charges for abuse of power – offers these people like goods on a market stall to various other districts, trying to sow division and manipulate them individually with empty promises of shelter in  containers. Once again, people are sleeping outside. Simply because someone has decided to turn them into cannon fodder at this very moment.

Meanwhile, majority of ethnic Bulgarian residents rallied not for justice, but for exile of their Roma neighbors. They shouted that these families posed a threat, that their very existence defiled the neighborhood. This is not a local dispute over property lines—it is an orchestrated campaign of exclusion, played out under the watchful eyes of institutions that refuse to intervene.

What does it say about a democracy when its laws protect the powerful, but demolish the weak? When a municipality abrogates its duty to safeguard children—offering them instead as bargaining chips in district offices, promising mobile homes in exchange for silence— we ask: how can any citizen trust their leaders? How can we teach our children compassion when they witness the state wield bulldozers against the poor?

A cruel irony persists: the very infrastructure of Sofia—its apartment blocks, roads, bridges—was built by Roma and other minority workers under the “Construction Troops,” their labor uncompensated. Yet their contribution has been systematically erased from the national narrative. Three political regimes—Kingdom, People’s Republic, Republic—have each rewritten history, conscripting Roma into labor and then expelling them from citizenship. Their homes and lives vanish under each new constitution, their rights annulled with bureaucratic pen strokes. Every time they start from beginning. What about after 50 years – new state order and new annulation?

The deficit is not only material—it is moral and legal. Calls for judicial reform, anti-corruption measures, housing integration and education for Roma ring hollow when laws are bent to punish the desperate. A roof over a child’s head should not be a political bargaining chip. A person’s dignity should not depend on the generosity of any politicians.

Sofia’s 2025 budget boasts nearly €1.5 billion, with few lines allocated for crisis housing and integration programs. Yet the remains of this operation lie buried under a tent—alone in the mud. Government ministries promise action, yet families wait. The president remains silent; pro-European, democratic parties squabble over strategy. Major media outlets avoid the story, fearful it might stir uncomfortable questions.

Brutal indifference and silence for days – what kinnd of justice and humanity is this!? Human lives and destinies are quietly bartered and tossed among political parties, all to mask shame and lawlessness—while noise and spectacle are used to make the public forget, and those in power escape accountability.

What are we really telling our children when we teach them to be kind? How do we help them understand what kindness truly means in their actions toward others? What does it mean, at its core, to be a good person? And how do we embrace our loved ones with sincerity, when we carry within us the weight of hate we’ve allowed to grow? A person may graduate from the most prestigious institutions, but without an ethical compass, they remain directionless—brilliant, perhaps, but lost.

But hope persists. Activists, Roma-led churches, NGOs and concerned citizens have refused to be silenced. They deliver meals in the rain, provide legal aid, document every demolition and every tear. Their voices—though threatened online and in private messages—carry the promise that solidarity can prevail where institutions fail.

Justice delayed in Zaharna Fabrika (Ilinden district ) means justice denied. Children who sleep on plastic tarps cannot dream of school. Mothers who fear the dawn cannot nurture hope. If we allow this atrocity to fade into a footnote, we betray not only these families, but the ideals of equality and human rights enshrined in Europe.

When any government turns its back on the vulnerable, we all diminish. In front of disaster made by humans to other humans, we have duty not to remain silent while humanity crumbles in the streets of Sofia. A duty to speak out and vocalize the silencing.

Because in the shadow of abandoned ruins, laughter and dreams have no home. And until every child—regardless of ethnicity—knows the security of a roof and the warmth of compassion, our work is civilized humans is unfinished.

We will not be silent. Stand with Roma families from Zaharna Fabrika. Stand for human dignity. We expect accountability and commitment by Europe and Bulgaria – the promise for valuing and just treatment of every human life has to be kept.