Anti-Roma Demonstrations Spread Across Bulgaria

SOFIA — Anti-Gypsy demonstrations that began during the weekend continued to spread across Bulgaria on Tuesday evening in response to the killing of a man by a minibus whose driver is linked to a man accused of being a Roma crime boss.

Prime Minister Boyko M. Borisov and his main political rival, President Georgi S. Parvanov, made a show of bipartisan unity Monday in visiting Katunitsa, the village where the killing happened on Friday. Protesters had burned houses and cars belonging to the family of the supposed crime boss, Kiril Rashkov, while demanding that the authorities “deport” the family from the village, which has a population of 2,300.

nytimes.com

‘Gypsies Into Glue!’: Anti-Roma Protests Sweep Bulgaria

Image: anti-roma_goons.jpg

The charge that a relative of a Roma clan leader killed a Bulgarian teenager sparked anti-Gypsy demonstrations across the country last weekend. Thousands of protesters took to the streets in at least 20 towns and cities, including the capital, Sofia. “A total of 168 have been arrested for violation of public order, the majority — for possession of small bombs, knives, bats, pipes from vacuum cleaners, kitchen meat hammers,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement Wednesday morning. The Ministry estimates that 2,200 people took part in the second straight night of demonstrations—the worst outbreak of unrest in the country in more than a decade.

http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/09/28/gypsies-into-glue-anti-roma-protests-sweep-bulgaria/

See also Wikipedia: Anti-Roma protests in Bulgaria 2011