1. Case-study No. & Title:
164. ’Face to Face with Misery’ project: supporting the Bulgarian population in Dimitrovgrad, Republic of Serbia, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Keywords:

3. Author information
2.1 Author’s Name:
Marijana Filipovic

2.2 Institutional Affiliation and Contact Details
Marijana Filipovic
Belgrade Centre for Women Studies
Srpskih vladara 34/1
11000 Belgrade
Yugoslavia

Tel: +381 18 338 974 (private)
E-mail: marijanaf@bankerinter.net

2.3 Date recorded:
17 January 2001

3. Good Practice Information Sheet
3.1 Local Level Good Practice:

The project has three main goals:

The Bulgarian minority in the Yugoslav-Bulgarian border region, according to the data obtained from the Helsinki Committee for Bulgarian Human Rights, consists of 25,214 people (there are approximately 50,000 Bulgarians on the whole territory of Republic of Serbia). It is often stressed that this region is economically one of the most undeveloped regions in Republic of Serbia. The average monthly income in this region is 9 DM, while the average income for the Republic as a whole is ten times bigger, that is 90 DM per month. Over and above the problems of basic living standards and the issue of survival, the Bulgarian minority also has problems in relation to the existence of proper means of communication, which would fulfil their needs for information and education. The existing media turned out to be very inadequate (although content is presented in the Bulgarian language). Representatives of the Bulgarian community (members of humanitarian organisation ‘Solidarity’ and Helsinki Committee for Bulgarian Human Rights) observed all these problems and alerted the local authorities. When local authorities refused to act, despite the responsibility upon them to do so, members of the above-mentioned NGOs organised themselves and started the project, which comprised the following elements:

a) Informing the general public about the problems of Bulgarian minority

After the unsuccessful meeting with the local authorities, members of the humanitarian organisation ‘Solidarity’ and Helsinki Committee for Bulgarian Human Rights, decided to act alone. The first step was to inform the public about the conditions in which Bulgarian minority lived. They tried to alert both the national and international community, but it turned out that the international community was much more interested in providing help.

b) Establishing contacts with humanitarian organizations from Yugoslavia and from abroad

Bulgarian minority representatives succeeded in attracting the attention of the following organizations: Fund for an Open Society from Belgrade, International humanitarian organization ADRA, International humanitarian organization OXFAM, and a number of different, usually small, humanitarian organizations from Bulgaria. These Bulgarian organizations started a project (in co-operation with ‘Solidarity’) called ‘From Bulgarians to Bulgarians’, which consisted of providing humanitarian help (food, clothes, books, toys, etc.) on a regular bases.

c) Delivering humanitarian packages
The first humanitarian help came from humanitarian organizations ADRA and OXFAM and consisted of 38 lorry-loads of food (100 packages of meet), clothes for children and adults, mattresses for sleeping. These packages were delivered by the members of ‘Solidarity’ mostly in the villages that belonged to the municipality of Dimitrovgrad. Help that came afterwards, consisted of the same things but the donators were from Bulgaria and it came more often. This help was distributed to the poorest inhabitants of both municipalities of Dimitrovgrad and Bosilegrad.

d) Establishing and finding financial means for publishing the bulletin ‘The Truth’
Due to the fact that already existing media in the Yugoslav-Bulgarian border region does not satisfy the basic needs of the Bulgarian community, representatives of the Helsinki Committee for Bulgarian Human Rights and the humanitarian organization ‘Solidarity’ founded an informative bulletin called ‘The Truth’. The main aim of the bulletin is to deal with problems facing Bulgarian community that nobody wants to speak about. The main problem with publishing this bulletin was to find sponsors. The help came from leading political party in Bulgaria, Union of Democratic Forces (SDS, Sredec, Sofia).

e) Publishing the ‘Social map of Bulgarian Minority in Serbia with an analysis of social, economic, and human problems or Yugoslav-Bulgarian border region’
The main aim of publishing this map was to collect data about the life of Bulgarian people in Serbia. These data would help interested organizations achieve a better understanding of the problems the Bulgarian minority is facing. Furthermore, this map should also have an important place in preserving facts and information about the Bulgarian community in Serbia. This map was published with financial help that came from the ‘Foundation for an Open Society’, Belgrade office.

The first results:
As Mr Mile Todorov, the president of humanitarian organization ‘Solidarity’, said, people were most interested in humanitarian help. The majority was quite satisfied with the fact that someone is helping them and in the very beginning, they could not believe that they would receive help for free. The problem is that now when they know who provided them help, they expect more and people from ‘Solidarity’ have problems with explaining that it is not that easy to provide humanitarian help. As for the success of bulletin ‘The Truth’ and ‘The social map of Bulgarian Minority in Serbia with an analysis of social, economic, and human problems or Yugoslav-Bulgarian border region’, Mr Mile Todorov said that the general impression was good and that they were expecting better results in days to come.

3.2 Location:
The project takes place in the municipalities of Dimitrovgrad and Bosilegrad, in Republic of Serbia (the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). The municipality of Dimitrovgrad is home to 13,448 inhabitants, whereas 90 per cent of them are of Bulgarian nationality. This municipality consists of the town of Dimitrovgrad (7273 inhabitants) and 42 villages. In the municipality of Bosilegrad live 11,600 people, out of which 2447 people live in the town of Bosilegrad while others live in 36 villages that belong to the municipality of Bosilegrad. The ratio of people of Bulgarian nationality is more or less the same as in the municipality of Dimitrovgrad. The project ‘Face to Face with Misery’ is aimed at all Bulgarian people living in these two municipalities.

3.3 Minority/Target Groups:
Minority: Bulgarian
Target group: Bulgarian communities in the Yugoslav-Bulgarian border region – municipalities of Dimitrovgrad and Bosilegrad (approximately 25,000 people).

3.4 Major Actors Involved:

3.5 Budget allocated by local government authorities and/or by other actors:
Providing and delivering humanitarian help:

Publishing ‘Social map of Bulgarian Minority in Serbia with an analysis of social, economic, and human problems of Yugoslav-Bulgarian border region’:

Publishing the bulletin ‘The Truth’:

The total amount of money spent on the project so far is not available.

3.6 Timeframe:

The initiative was first proposed in December 1998, officially launched in January 1999 and put into practice in March 1999 (when the first packages of humanitarian help arrived in the municipalities). The project is expected to continue until local authorities take over responsibility for poor economic and social situations of Bulgarian community in the region.

3.7 Local level good practice relation to national level ethnic policy:
The project ‘Face to face with Misery’ is not the result of the application of national level legislation. The Bulgarian minority is in fact recognised as both a national and an ethnic group and the state does have obligations towards this minority in terms of assuring basic economic needs, education in the minority language, providing information and media in the language of minority and so on. However, this does not work in practice. Instead of being educated in their own language, Bulgarian pupils have Bulgarian language as a second language with only two classes per week. Of course, at the beginning of a child’s education parent have a freedom to choose the language of education (Bulgarian or Serbian) but they are strongly advised to choose Serbian; otherwise, they are put under pressure and taken to police for ‘informative discussions’. The most obvious evidence of national legislation not being implemented is the refusal of local authorities to support the present project. Thus, the project is entirely the result of the efforts of the local humanitarian organization ‘Solidarity’ and the Helsinki Committee for Bulgarian Human Rights.

4. Good Practice Description
Participating organisations:

Background to the project:

The number of Bulgarian people living in the area of this project was earlier much greater. Until 1962, almost all Bulgarian people in Serbia had been living in these two municipalities (Dimitrovgrad and Bosilegrad). However, in 1962 as a result of administrative classification, a number of villages that belonged to these municipalities were linked to other municipalities (Pirot, Surdulica, and Babusnica). It is interesting to mention that the villages linked to these municipalities were the biggest and the richest ones, with an almost entirely Bulgarian population. This administrative measure had a drastic influence on the assimilation of the Bulgarian minority – from 1960 until the present day, the number of Bulgarians (or at least those who declare themselves to be Bulgarians) in Serbia decreased three-fold. The territory where the project takes place is one of the most undeveloped areas in Serbia. This is especially true for the Bosilegrad municipality mostly because of its geographic position: it is situated far away from the main roads, in the mountains, and during winter months it is cut off from the rest of the world completely. There is no developed industry in this municipality, and the lack of media, TV, and very often electricity is everyday reality for Bulgarian people living here.

The situation in Dimitrovgrad municipality is a little bit better mostly thanks to its better geographic position – a very important international line of communication passes through it. Although Dimitrovgrad is home to five large factories, almost none of them are profitable and a great number of workers are on paid or unpaid leave. The situation of those who are employed is not much better because they only receive a very minimum personal income.
A separate problem is the issue of exercising the right to receive an education in the minority language. The Bulgarian minority is recognized as both an ethnic and a national group and its members accordingly have the right to have their children educated in their mother tongue, namely Bulgarian. Due to the oppressive politics that the ex-regime oriented towards all minorities (not only Bulgarian), Bulgarians were not in position to claim this right. Parents were strongly ‘advised’ to choose Serbian as the main language of their children. This resulted in children forgetting their mother tongue and losing contact with their heritage. The problem is further complicated by the fact that all existing media dedicated to the Bulgarian minority, although presenting their content in Bulgarian, do not deal with Bulgarian traditions or problems, but almost exclusively with the culture of ‘majority’ and previously with the daily activities of regime of Slobodan Milosevic.

The above-mentioned problems combined with the fact that the Bulgarian population in Serbia is constantly decreasing (according to the Bureau of Census data, every fourth inhabitant of the Bulgarian municipality is over 60 years old; there are some villages in the municipality of Bosilegrad where there are no girls, and where only people over 60 live) provoked representatives of the humanitarian organization ‘Solidarity’ and the Helsinki Committee for Bulgarian Human Rights into action. Since local authorities, although having legal obligations towards the Bulgarian minority, refused to get involved and help, people from ‘Solidarity’ and from the Helsinki Committee for Bulgarian Human Rights decided to start solving this problem on their own.

In order to at least reduce the effects of the poor economic situation, these two organizations started collecting humanitarian aid for those in greatest jeopardy. As for the problems with preserving Bulgarian language and tradition, they started working on the publication of the ‘Social map’ and the bulletin ‘The Truth’.

Involvement of the local authorities
As mentioned above, the local authorities did not take part in the implementation of this project. Although they were, according to the constitutional statements, obliged not only to take part but also to undertake projects on their own, local authorities simply followed the policy of the ex-regime towards minorities. Being themselves members of the Socialist Party of Serbia (the party of Slobodan Milosevic), they were rather hostile towards representatives of the Bulgarian minority. It is interesting to note that the highest-ranking representatives of the local authorities are of Bulgarian nationality.

The main aspects of the project ‘Face to Face with Misery’:
i) At a broad level the project serves the purpose of letting Bulgarian people from the Yugoslav-Bulgarian border region know that someone is thinking about their problems and living conditions. According to Mr Mile Todorov, this aspect is very important because they faced great lethargy when they first met Bulgarian people (in the initial project preparations phase). These people, after spending almost entire lives without practical experience of help of any kind, had lost their hope that situation could be better. There was no relevant information available about Bulgarian people in this region. Bearing all this in mind, meeting people and getting knowledge about their way of life was one of the most important aspects of the project.

ii) More specifically, the project is to collect information about the current state of affairs within the Bulgarian minority. At a practical level, this means gathering data about economic, cultural, social, and political situations in which Bulgarian people in the border region live today. In order to successfully conduct this aspect, activists of ‘Solidarity’ and the Helsinki Committee for Bulgarian Human Rights were organised into two groups: the first group was in charge of collecting data in the field, while the second group dealt with writing and publishing ‘The Social map’ which would include all the information obtained during field-trips. Since neither ‘Solidarity’ nor the Helsinki Committee had the financial means necessary to publish the social map, their representatives contacted the Foundation for an Open Society, Belgrade office. Representatives of the Foundation managed to find financial resources for this part of the project and thus contributed to the project’s overall success.

iii) Obtaining and distributing the most basic essentials to ensure the survival of Bulgarian communities in the border region is also a very important part of the project. This work was done in cooperation with the international humanitarian organizations OXFAM and ADRA, which provided 38 lorry-loads of humanitarian aid for those most in jeopardy among the Bulgarian people in the region. However, this aspect does not comprise only humanitarian aid from the international community but also from the minority’s ‘mother country’ – Bulgaria. Namely, after the word was spread about the situation of Bulgarian minority in the Yugoslav-Bulgarian border region, some small humanitarian organizations - mainly from Sofia - organized themselves and gathered a respectable amount of humanitarian aid, which was distributed by ‘Solidarity’. This small project was called ‘From Bulgarians to Bulgarians’ and it is very significant because it started changing the ways Bulgarian communities from Serbia have been perceived in Bulgaria. These communities were hitherto only referred by Bulgarian politicians engaged in political propaganda during elections campaigns.

iv) The last aspect of the project deals with the idea of keeping the public (both Serbian and Bulgarian) informed about the new developments in the region concerning Bulgarian minority. It is to fulfil this purpose that the bulletin ‘The Truth’ has been founded. This bulletin is published with the financial help of the Bulgarian political party ‘Union of Democratic Forces’ (SDS, Sofia) and it is distributed for free in Bulgaria and in border regions in Serbia. However, the main problem with this bulletin is the fact that it is published only in Bulgarian. Because of this, the majority of Serbian people cannot read it and thus the idea of informing the Serbian public about Bulgarian minority issues is somewhat undermined.

The future of the project:
The project is expected to last at least until the local authorities take responsibilities for managing the Bulgarian minority’s problems. Since Mr Todorov doubts that this will happen soon (although the recent political changes affected the municipality of Dimitrovgrad, but not the municipality of Bosilegrad), there are plans for some further steps to be undertaken:

Financial support for the project:
The means for realising this project, either material or financial, had to be found from different sources: the local humanitarian organization ‘Solidarity’, Helsinki Committee for Bulgarian Human Rights, the Foundation for an Open Society, Belgrade office, international humanitarian organizations ADRA and OXFAM, as well as the political party ‘Union of democratic Forces’ from Sofia, Bulgaria. As it was mentioned above, ‘Solidarity’ and the Helsinki Committee for Bulgarian Human Rights are responsible for delivering humanitarian aid, as well as for publishing the ‘Social map’. The Foundation for an Open Society also participated in publishing the ‘Social map’, while humanitarian organizations ADRA and OXFAM provided ‘Solidarity’ with humanitarian packages (38 lorries with food, clothes, and mattresses for sleeping). The ‘Union of Democratic Forces’ provided financial help for publishing the bulletin ‘The Truth’.

Reaction of the local Bulgarian community on the project:
Nobody has so far seriously investigated the attitude that the members of the Bulgarian community have towards the project. However, according to the representatives of the ‘Solidarity’ and material from the field, the majority of people are quite satisfied with the project in general, especially with its humanitarian part. People were usually quite shocked to see humanitarian aid; the most often repeated sentence was: ‘Nobody has ever given something to us!’

As for the reactions connected with publishing the ‘Social map’ and the bulletin ‘The Truth’, one cannot find such optimistic attitudes. Of course, Bulgarian people are satisfied to know that somebody is interested in the problems they have, but they do not actually read these publications. For them, and especially for those who live in the distant villages, it is too much effort to read these publications. Usually, they do not have time or simply cannot read because they are illiterate (I want to stress again that Bulgarian population in this region is ‘old’ – the majority of people are over sixty years of age). Mr Mile Todorov, the president of the humanitarian organization ‘Solidarity’, said that they are aware of the fact that so far these publications did not have much of an ‘audience’. However, this does not concern Mr Todorov and his colleagues, since, as he said, the ‘Social map’ and ‘The Truth’ were still present in the public discourse and people spoke about them. They are an attempt to preserve what is left from the Bulgarian language and tradition. Mr Todorov was very hopeful that these publications would find an audience in the future.

Problems that appeared during the project:
Co-operation with the local authorities; travelling to distant villages in municipality of Bosilegrad; problems with volunteers. The most important problems in conducting the project that came out so far are as follows:

The biggest and the most important problem that occurred was that of communication with the local authorities. Not only did they refuse to help and take part in conducting the project, but they also did everything to prevent the project (very often even using police force);
Travelling to a great number of villages in municipality of Bosilegrad was also a big problem because they are situated away from the main roads and are very often cut off from the rest of the world. This is the reason why delivering of humanitarian aid was done not by using cars or lorries, but horses and donkeys. Volunteers were a couple of times forced to even carry heavy boxes for a couple of miles, because there was no other way to bring packages to villages.

The above-mentioned problem caused problems with finding volunteers because very few people were prepared to make such sacrifices. Luckily, the organisation ‘Solidarity’ managed to find few people who did not mind going to distant places. The situation was even better after the first delivery because villagers came down from the mountains and brought packages to villages themselves.

Opposition to the project:
Opposition to the project is present only at the level of communication between the project organisers and the local authorities from both municipalities. Until September’s elections, local governments in these two municipalities consisted mostly of the representatives of Slobodan Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia. Accordingly, they almost literally followed Milosevic’s unofficial policy towards national minorities. Practically, this means that Bulgarian people could not claim constitutionally guaranteed rights related to the preservation of human dignity (a minimum level of economic resources, education in their own (minority) language, the right to receive information in their mother tongue, and so on.

Local authorities did not care about the problems Bulgarian people have been facing. Moreover, they also prevented almost every attempt to change the situation. Examples of using police force to prevent the celebration of Bulgarian national holidays only illustrate this claim. Mr Todorov further illustrates local authorities’ hostility by quoting a local official who was making fun of Solidarity’s attempts to distribute humanitarian aid: ‘Whom do you want to help? Not even god can help them!’