Wayzata World Factbook 1996/The World Factbook - 1996 Edition - Wayzata Technology (3079) (1996).iso/mac/TEXT/HUMANrts/BULGARIA.TXU

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TITLE:  BULGARIA HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1994
AUTHOR:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DATE:  FEBRUARY 1995



Section 3  Respect for Political Rights:  The Right of Citizens
           to Change Their Government

Citizens have the right to change their government and head of
state through the election of the President and of the members
of the unicameral National Assembly, although restrictions on
political parties based on religious, ethnic, or racial
identities have the effect of circumscribing access to the
political process (see Section 2.b.).  President Zhelyu Zhelev
was elected in 1992 in the first direct presidential
elections.

The most recent parliamentary elections took place in December
1994 when more than 40 political parties and coalitions
participated and approximately 75 percent of the electorate
voted.  The Bulgarian Socialist Party won an absolute majority
of the 240-seat Parliament, which is to be convened no later
than 1 month after its election, according to the
Constitution.  International observers commented that the vote
was conducted in accordance with free and democratic election
procedures and in a peaceful, well-organized fashion.  However,
CSCE and other observers voiced concern about the unequal
access to the mass media for all political parties,
particularly to television.

The Constitution provides for elections by secret ballot.  The
240 parliamentary deputies are elected by a proportional system
from party lists.  Their term is for 4 years, although the
Constitution provides for preterm elections if Parliament is
unable to agree on a government.  Suffrage is universal at the
age of 18.  A distinct separation of powers exists between the
Government (Prime Minister and Council of Ministers) and the
President, who is Chief of State.  The President has limited
powers and is elected for a term of 5 years.

There are no restrictions in law on the participation of women
in government.  A number of women held elected and appointed
office at high levels; the Prime Minister of the preelection
caretaker Government and a Deputy Prime Minister, who also
served as Finance Minister, were women.  However, women held
only 15 percent of the seats in the most recent Parliament and
no Cabinet-level positions in the Berov government.

Section 4  Governmental Attitude Regarding International and
           Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations
           of Human Rights

Local and international human rights groups operate freely.
Among these is the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, founded in
1992 and formally affiliated with the international Helsinki
organization in 1993.  A separate group, called Helsinki Watch,
is not affiliated with the International Helsinki Federation.
Another group, the Human Rights Project, actively investigated
police-Roma clashes and made efforts to work with the Ministry
of the Interior and local officials.  The Government did not
interfere with the work of NGO's and human rights groups,
although it was often reluctant to provide information or
active cooperation.

Section 5  Discrimination Based on Race, Sex, Religion,
           Disability, Language, or Social Status

The Constitution provides for individual rights, equality, and
protection against discrimination, but in practice
discrimination still exists, particularly against women and
Roma.

     Women

The Constitution forbids privileges or restrictions of rights
on the basis of sex.  However, women face discrimination both
in terms of recruitment for employment and the likelihood of
layoffs.  Official figures show the rate of unemployment for
women to be higher than that for men, and this gap appears to
be widening.  While women are equally likely to attend
university, some single mothers report difficulty in finding
housing, either for financial reasons or because their needs
are perceived to be less compelling.  Women, in the main,
continue to have primary responsibility for child-rearing and
housekeeping even if they are employed outside the home.

The courts prosecute rape, although it remains an underreported
crime because some stigma still attaches to the victim.  The
maximum sentence for rape is 8 years; convicted offenders often
receive a shorter sentence or early parole.  Marital rape is a
crime but rarely prosecuted.  Human rights and women's groups
say that domestic abuse is a serious problem, but there are no
figures, official or otherwise, on its occurrence.  Courts and
prosecutors tend to view domestic abuse as a family rather than
criminal problem, and in most cases victims of domestic
violence take refuge with family or friends rather than
approaching the authorities.  No government agencies provide
shelter or counseling for such individuals, and there are no
active programs to address the problem.

Many of the approximately 30 women's organizations in Bulgaria
are closely associated with political parties or have primarily
professional agendas.  Of those which exist mainly to defend
women's interests, the two largest are the Women's Democratic
Union of Bulgaria, heir to the group that existed under the
Zhivkov dictatorship, and the Bulgarian Women's Association,
which disappeared under communism but has now reemerged and has
chapters in a number of cities.

     Children

The Government appears to be committed to protecting children's
welfare.  It maintains, for example, a sizable network of
orphanages throughout the country.  Groups that exist to defend
the rights of children charge that an increasing number of
children are at serious risk because the Government's social
insurance payments fall farther behind inflation and are often
disbursed as much as 6 months late.

The vast majority of some 2 million children are free from
societal abuse, although skinhead groups beat some Roma
children, particularly the homeless or abandoned.  Some Roma
minors were forced into prostitution by family or community
members; there was little police effort to address these
problem of discrimination.

     National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Ethnic Turks and Roma make up the two largest minorities, each
constituting from 6 to 9 percent of the population.  Pomaks
constitute the other sizable minority, comprising 2 to
3 percent of the population.  Sometimes referred to as
Bulgarian Muslims, Pomaks are a distinct group of Slavic
descent whose ancestors converted from Orthodox Christianity to
Islam.  Most are Muslim, although a handful have become
atheists or reconverted to Christianity.

There are no restrictions on the practice of Muslim religious
traditions, the speaking of Turkish in public, or the use of
non-Slavic names.  A defense bill before Parliament sparked
controversy when deputies proposed language that would make use
of the Bulgarian language mandatory in the military.  MRF
leaders charged this might lead to harassment of Turkish-
speaking military recruits.  An eventual compromise in the text
of the draft bill made Bulgarian the official language of the
military; the Minister of Defense stated publicly that recruits
who wished to speak Turkish among themselves were free to do so.

Voluntary Turkish-language classes, funded by the Government,
continued and expanded in areas with significant Turkish-
speaking populations.  Some ethnic Turkish leaders, mainly in
the MRF, demanded that Turkish-language schooling be made
compulsory in ethnic Turkish areas, but the Government resisted
this.  Government regulations issued in September specify that
pupils may begin study of a non-Bulgarian mother tongue in the
first grade rather than in the third grade, as had been the
case previously.

BSP and nationalist figures, as well as members of the Internal
Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, continued to accuse some
members of the ethnic Turkish community of "forcible
Turkification," i.e., pressuring Pomaks to declare themselves
ethnic Turks and take Turkish names.  Independent observers
found community and peer pressure but no evidence of forcible
Turkification.  Reports continued in 1994 that some Muslim
religious figures refused to perform burial services for
Muslims with Slavic names, a practice which some observers saw
as an encroachment on religious freedom.

In the 1992 census, approximately 3.4 percent of the population
identified itself as Roma.  The real figure is probably at
least twice that high, since many persons of Roma descent
prefer to identify themselves to the authorities as ethnic
Turks or Bulgarians.  Roma groups continued to be divided among
themselves, although several groups had some success presenting
Roma issues to the Government.  As individuals and as an ethnic
group, Roma faced sharply rising levels of discrimination.

A troubling new development in 1994 was a series of attacks by
private citizens on Roma communities.  The most serious attack
took place in February in the village of Dolno Belotintsi.
After a Roma conscript who had deserted his military unit
apparently committed a murder, inhabitants of the town launched
a series of attacks upon some 20 Roma families who lived
there.  Roma houses were broken into and destroyed, and a group
of men wielding guns and farm tools forced about 30 Roma,
including children and aged persons, to carry out a forced
march to a neighboring town and back.  Despite repeated
complaints by the victims during the 2 days of attacks, local
police and prosecutors took no action.  Amnesty International
and Bulgarian human rights groups have charged that the
Government violated the human rights of these Roma by failing
to provide them adequate protection.  The home of one family
was burned to the ground, and the family was housed in
inadequate temporary quarters at the end of the year.  The
other families eventually returned to their homes.

Roma encounter difficulties applying for social benefits, and
rural Roma are discouraged from claiming land to which they are
entitled under the law dividing up agricultural collectives.
Most Roma children are directed at age 12 into special schools
for "vocational training" which severely limit their subsequent
employment prospects.

Overall, there were fewer reports of police mistreatment of
Roma than in 1993, but many more instances in which private
citizen groups attacked Roma.  In some cases police were
accused of standing by and deliberately failing to intervene.
A police investigation into 1993 allegations of police
brutality in Stara Zagora concluded there was no inappropriate
police behavior, although the American chapter of Helsinki
Watch, Amnesty International, the Human Rights Project, and the
Bulgarian Helsinki Committee all concluded that police had
behaved with brutality.

Recognizing the discrimination that Roma and other minorities
face, the Council of Ministers set up an interagency Ethnic
Affairs Council chaired by a deputy prime minister.  The
Ministry of Education continued its program to introduce
Roma-language schoolbooks into schools with Roma students,
albeit slowly.  Roma police were hired in some localities, and
some teachers received Roma-language training, although this
program lagged far behind its Turkish-language counterpart and
ran into significant local opposition.

Workplace discrimination against minorities continued to be a
problem, especially for Roma.  Employers justify such
discrimination on the grounds that most Roma have relatively
low training and education.  Supervisory jobs are generally
given to ethnic Bulgarian employees, with ethnic Turks, Pomaks,
and Roma among the first to be laid off.

During compulsory military service, most Muslims and Roma are
shunted into labor units where they often perform commercial as
well military construction and maintenance rather than serving
in normal military units.  The MRF protested this practice, as
did human rights groups and labor observers who cited it as a
violation of International Labor Organization (ILO) accords.
There are only a few ethnic Turkish and reportedly no Roma
officers in the military.

Thousands of Bulgarians, mainly in the southwest, identify
themselves as Macedonians, most for historical and geographic
reasons.  Active members of the two organizations which purport
to defend the interests of ethnic Macedonians, UMO-Ilinden and
TMO-Ilinden, are believed to number in the hundreds (see
Section 2.b.).

     People with Disabilities

Disabled persons receive a range of financial assistance,
including free public transportation, reduced prices on
modified automobiles, and free equipment such as wheelchairs.
As in other areas, however, budgetary constraints mean that
such payments have fallen behind.  Handicapped individuals have
access to university training and to housing and employment,
although no special programs are in place to allow them to live
up to their full employment potential.  To date, little effort
has been made to change building or street layouts to help
blind or otherwise physically handicapped persons.  The policy
under the previous regime of deliberately separating both
mentally and physically handicapped persons, including very
young children, and often placing them in homes and workplaces
remote from the larger cities, remains unchanged.

Section 6  Worker Rights

     a.  The Right of Association

The 1991 Constitution guarantees the right of all workers to
form or join trade unions of their own choice, and this right
appears to have been freely exercised in 1994.  Estimates of
the unionized share of the work force range from 30 to
50 percent.  This share is shrinking as large firms lay off
workers and most new positions appear in small, nonunionized
businesses.

Bulgaria has two large trade union confederations, the
Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Bulgaria (CITUB)
and Podkrepa.  CITUB, the successor to the trade union
controlled by the former Communist regime, operates as an
independent entity.  Podkrepa, an independent confederation
created in 1989, was one of the earliest opposition forces but
is no longer a member of the UDF.

The 1992 Labor Code recognizes the right to strike when other
means of conflict resolution have been exhausted, but political
strikes are forbidden.  Workers in essential services such as
the military, police, energy production and supply, and health
sectors are prohibited from striking.  Students and miners went
on strike in 1994 but won no major concessions from the
Government.  Legal actions initiated against some unions in
1992 on the grounds their activities had violated the
constitutional prohibition against political activities by
citizens' associations (defined to include trade unions) were
still pending in 1994.  Until the limitations of this
constitutional prohibition are more clearly defined, either by
legislation or judicial precedent, there remains the potential
for inappropriate attacks on legitimate union activities,
although no such attacks took place in 1994.

The Labor Code's prohibitions against antiunion discrimination
include a 6-month period of protection against dismissal as a
form of retribution.  While these provisions appear to be
within international norms, there is no mechanism other than
the courts for resolving complaints, and the burden of proof in
such a case rests entirely on the employee.

The ILO in 1993 requested further information on lustration
proceedings, measures directed at compensating ethnic Turks for
abuses under the previous regime, efforts taken to improve the
economic situation of minorities, and measures to promote
equality of workplace opportunity between men and women.  At
the end of 1994, the ILO was still reviewing the information
provided to it by the Government and had not yet issued
opinions or recommendations.

There are no restrictions governing affiliation or contact with
international labor organizations, and Bulgarian unions
actively exercise this right.

     b.  The Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively

The Labor Code institutes collective bargaining, which was
practiced nationally and on a local level.  Both CITUB and
Podkrepa complained, however, that while the legal structure
for collective bargaining was adequate, many employers failed
to bargain in good faith or to adhere to concluded agreements.
Because most large firms are still state owned, the unions
demanded that the Government enforce collective bargaining
procedures.  The Government responded that since state-owned
firms were independently managed, the appropriate recourse was
through the courts, not the executive branch.

Only Podkrepa and CITUB are authorized to bargain
collectively.  This restriction led to complaints by smaller
unions, which may in individual workplaces have more members
than either of the two large confederations.  One of these
smaller unions, the National Trade Union, lodged a formal
complaint with the ILO.  Smaller unions also protested their
exclusion from the National Social Council.

There were no instances in which an employer was found guilty
of antiunion discrimination and required to reinstate workers
fired for union activities.  The International Confederation of
Free Trade Unions continued to charge that the revised Labor
Code does not provide effective protection against acts of
antiunion discrimination.  It also asserted that the "national
representation" requirement for participation in the National
Social Council violated the right to organize, and criticized a
provision making negotiation of individual contracts possible
regardless of existing collective agreements.

The same obligation of collective bargaining and adherence to
labor standards prevails in the export processing zones, which
at year's end appear to exist largely on paper.

     c.  Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor

The Constitution prohibits forced or compulsory labor.  Many
observers agreed that the practice of shunting minority and
conscientious-objector military draftees into work units which
often carry out commercial construction and maintenance
projects is a form of forced labor (see Section 5).

     d.  Minimum Age for Employment of Children

The Labor Code sets the minimum age for employment at 16 years;
the minimum for dangerous work is set at 18.  Employers and the
Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare are responsible for
enforcing these provisions.  Child labor laws are enforced well
in the formal sector.  Underage employment in the informal and
agricultural sectors is increasing as collective farms are
broken up and the private sector continues to grow.  However,
the practice does not yet seem to be either widespread or
systematic.

     e.  Acceptable Conditions of Work

The national monthly minimum wage was adjusted three times in
1994 and stood at year's end at approximately $33 (2,143 leva).
Pensions, unemployment, and child benefits were raised by about
25 percent during the year.  Inflation in 1994 was estimated at
100 percent and dramatically increased the cost of living.  The
minimum wage is not enough to provide a wage earner and family
a decent standard of living.  The Constitution stipulates the
right to social security and welfare aid assistance for the
temporarily unemployed, although in practice such assistance
was often either late or not disbursed.

The Labor Code provides for a standard workweek of 40 hours
with at least one 24-hour rest period per week.  The Ministry
of Labor and Social Welfare enforces both the minimum wage and
the standard workweek.  Enforcement has been generally
effective in the state sector, although there are reports that
state-run enterprises fall into arrears on salary payments to
their employees if they incur losses.  Enforcement of work
conditions is weaker in the emerging private sector.

Bulgaria has a national labor safety program with standards
established by the Labor Code.  The Constitution states that
employees are entitled to healthy and nonhazardous working
conditions.  The Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare is
responsible for enforcing these provisions.  Under the Labor
Code, an employee has the right to remove himself from a work
situation which presents a serious or immediate danger to life
or health without jeopardizing continued employment.  In
practice, refusal to work in situations with relatively high
accident rates or associated chronic health problems would
result in loss of employment for many workers.  Conditions in
many cases are worsening owing to budget stringencies and a
growing private sector over which labor inspectors have not yet
achieved effective supervision.