[WCAR] Bulgaria: Courts act to suppress discrimination against Roma

Press Release
30 September 2004

Strategic litigation actions undertaken by the ERRC and its local partners
prompt Bulgarian courts to sanction discriminators under recently adopted
Bulgarian anti-discrimination act. Courts provide redress to Romani
victims, restoring dignity.

Since the new anti-discrimination legislation came into force in Bulgaria
on 1 January 2004, the European Roma Rights Center (ERRC), acting alone or
together with Romani Baht Foundation (RBF) and/or the Bulgarian Helsinki
Committee (BHC), has filed a number of civil actions alleging
discrimination against Roma. To date, not yet a year since the entry into
force of the law, the ERRC and local partners have obtained five landmark
judgements from Bulgarian courts.

In the first judgement, on 9 July 2004, the Sofia District Court ruled
against a company called VALI Ltd. and awarded compensation to the
plaintiff Ms. Sevda Nanova. Ms. Nanova is a Romani women and was found by
the Court to have suffered discrimination in access to services, solely on
the basis of her race. VALI Ltd. operates a clothing shop in a Sofia
marketplace. Acting through its employees, the shop refused to provide
services to Ms. Nanova and banned her from its premises. In addition, the
company's staff threatened Ms. Nanova with violence and repeatedly resorted
to verbal abuse with respect to her Romani origin. The Court found that
such conduct amounts to discrimination based on ethnic origin and is
therefore in violation of Bulgarian law.

In another case, on 12 July 2004, the Sofia District Court adopted a
decision in the matter of Mr. Rumen Grigorov v. the Sofia state-owned
electric company. The case concerned a Romani plaintiff who had not been
allowed to connect his house to the electricity network as he refused to
sign an additional agreement which would permit the company to put his
electrical metre on a pole 9 metres high. The company's reasoning for the
application of such measures was that this was the only way to make sure
that "Roma do not illegally connect to the power supply". The fact that the
plaintiff was a regular payer, had no history of trying to illegally
connect to the power grid, and was unable to check his electricity
consumption as result of the unorthodox placement of the electricity metre,
was simply not taken into account by the service provider. Having
considered the facts of the case, and in particular the fact that a
practice of this sort was arbitrary and employed by the respondent in
Romani neighbourhoods only, the Sofia District Court ruled that the
plaintiff had suffered discrimination, and ordered the respondent company
to provide the plaintiff adequate access to and control of the electricity
metre as well as to cease with such practices in the future.

On 6 August 2004, in a separate case concerning an almost identical
situation, the Sofia District Court ruled in favor of Mr. Kocho Kochev and
five other Romani plaintiffs, all residents of "Filipovtsi", a segregated
Romani settlement in Sofia, and in so doing found that the respondent
state-owned electric company had committed an act of discrimination.
Importantly, despite the fact that the new anti-discrimination law was
enacted after this case had been filed, the court applied the new provision
on the shifting of the burden of proof to the respondent and explained that
being of a procedural character it was applicable to already pending cases
as well as to those which have been filed following the entry into force of
the new law. The court considered the plaintiffs' claim of discrimination
as sufficiently substantiated to shift the burden of proof onto the
respondent. The respondent ultimately failed to establish that other --
non-Romani -- consumers had been treated similarly or indeed that its
actions had served any legitimate purpose. Accordingly, the Court found
that the six Romani individuals had suffered discrimination, and ordered
the company to remove the electrical metres and to re-locate them at a
height where they would be accessible, as well as to pay the plaintiffs
compensation.

A fourth case won by Romani plaintiffs under the new law relates to
employment discrimination. On 13 August 2004, the Sofia District Court
adopted a decision in the case of Mr. Anguel Assenov v. Kenar Ltd. The
lawsuit was filed in order to challenge the refusal of the company to allow
Mr. Assenov to attend a job interview, solely due to his ethnic origin.
Acting to test reports that the company in question pursued discriminatory
hiring policies, Mr. Assenov, a young Romani man, placed a phone call to
the office of the respondent company, a food producer and distributor, to
inquire about a job announcement publicised by the respondent. One of the
persons employed in the company answered the plaintiff's call and informed
him about the requirements for the job. The employee of the company also
asked Mr. Assenov to come for an interview. The plaintiff then inquired
whether his Romani identity would be a problem for his application. In
response, the employee stated that this was indeed a problem. Moreover, the
plaintiff was told that there was consequently no need for an interview,
since the company has a strict policy of not hiring Roma. The phone
conversation took place through a loudspeaker, and was therefore heard by
two other witnesses who later testified in court. In the lawsuit, the
plaintiff requested a finding of discrimination, the award of compensation,
as well as an order from the court obliging the respondent to refrain from
similar hiring practices in the future. Ultimately, the Sofia District
Court decided in favour of the plaintiff and in doing so granted all of the
above-requested remedies.

Finally, on 19 August 2004, the Sofia District Court rendered a decision in
a case against the Sofia state-owned electric company concerning a
discriminatory denial of electricity to bill-paying Romani consumers. The
ERRC joined the proceedings as an "interested party", i.e. an intervener in
the public interest. On 9 January 2004, a breakdown in the power grid in
the segregated Romani neighbourhood of "Fakulteta", Sofia, discontinued the
power supply to more than 100 Romani families. The provider refused to
repair the network for more than two months, contending that many of the
affected consumers had unpaid debts to the company. Along with the debtors,
however, more than 30 Romani households with no outstanding debts had also
been denied restoration of their power supply. In court, the plaintiffs
argued that such actions amount to a collective sanction imposed on debtors
as well as non-debtors, that they were discriminatory because they were
imposed on residents of a Romani neighbourhood, and that the power supply
in non-Romani neighbourhoods is never denied to bill-paying consumers on
account of their neighbours' unpaid debts. Having considered the case, the
Sofia District Court agreed and held that the Romani plaintiffs had indeed
suffered discrimination.

Racial discrimination, as described in these five cases is in breach of
numerous international standards such as those contained in the United
Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It is also in
violation of the Bulgarian anti-discrimination act which, though it does
not relate to instances of racially-motivated violence, prohibits
discrimination by public as well as private parties in all fields of public
life, including the provision of services and employment. It provides for a
special legal remedy against discrimination and also grants human rights
groups standing to file lawsuits on their own behalf, in the absence of
individual plaintiffs, in situations where "the rights of many parties are
breached". This provision was utilized by the ERRC and its partners in the
last case described above. Perhaps most importantly, the new Bulgarian law
provides for the shift in the burden of proof onto the alleged
discriminator, once a complainant has established a plausible case of
discrimination, relieving victims of a major evidentiary obstacle in
obtaining justice. In most of its recent discrimination cases in Bulgaria,
including the ones described above, the ERRC has filed amicus briefs for
the court's convenience explaining in detail the concept of "the shifting
of the burden of proof". The Bulgarian anti-discrimination act was enacted
pursuant to the requirements of the European Union Race Equality Directive.

With respect to the first five judgements adopted on the basis of this act,
ERRC Executive Director Dimitrina Petrova said: "We welcome the rulings.
Laws are only as good as their implementation. Bulgarian courts, to their
credit, have now shown this clearly. They have embraced the opportunity to
apply a solid new law and in doing so correct the injustice suffered by
Romani victims of discrimination. Also, the Bulgarian example proves that
breaking new legal ground does not always need to take a long period of
time, once the necessary statutory tools have been made available."

For additional details regarding the above lawsuits, please contact
Branimir Plese, ERRC Legal Director (e-mail: branko@errc.org, phone:+361
413 2200).


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