‘What kind of experiment is this?’, wondered Roma activist Ognyan Isaev as he drove into the Bulgarian city of Sliven and saw hundreds of parents running towards local schools. It was 7 October 2019 and Isaev had come to town to launch an education project with the Trust for Social Achievement. Watching from his car as a panicked crowd surged through Nadezhda, a nearby neighbourhood largely inhabited by Roma, Isaev thought to himself: ‘We are in the middle of the experiment’.
‘When you see a crowd like that, you know something is wrong’, the activist recalls. A few minutes later, Isaev discovered the source of the panic on social media: a rumour was spreading that social services were about to take children from school and send them to Norway.
Isaev was witnessing the effects of a right-wing disinformation campaign targeting Roma communities, aimed at undermining Bulgaria’s proposed National Child Strategy. In 2019 the Bulgaria government was presenting its draft 2019–2030 strategy, backed by UNICEF and civil society, aimed at better protecting vulnerable families, preventing abuse against children and increasing investment in a broader range of services for minors; according to Eurostat, in 2018, 33.7 per cent of Bulgarian children were at risk of poverty and therefore needed more state protection.
Facebook was awash with disinformation narratives undermining the scheme. Barnevernet, Norway’s child protection system, had been cast as the puppeteer in the shadows: Norway was said to be co‑funding the project so gay couples in Norway could adopt Bulgarian children. According to this false narrative, the Bulgarian state was copying the Norwegian child protection model and could remove children from their families for trivial reasons – for example, if parents failed to buy them toys or ice cream.
‘A sinister alliance of organizations and interests’ lay behind derailing the draft law,’ says Delia Pop, director of the Tanya’s Dream Foundation, which campaigns to prevent children from being separated from their families. The strategy was greeted with a massive wave of disinformation, fuelled by conservative groups and extremist political forces. Its opponents claimed that an ‘immoral West’ was using the legislation to attack the traditional family. At one point, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church even asserted that parents had the right to hit their children as a way of disciplining them, only to backtrack after the remarks provoked an outcry from civil society.
The far‑right party VMRO-Bulgarian National Movement (VMRO‑BND) went so far as to allege that the strategy amounted to the nationalization of Bulgarian children. ‘They were saying that NGOs wanted to steal Bulgarian children and send them to Norway to be adopted by gay couples, that there was a gay market in Brussels where Bulgarian children were being sold – all sorts of narratives’, recalls Ognyan Isaev.
The sustained disinformation efforts triggered ‘a wave of collective hysteria and protests’, according to Eurochild. Rallies against the strategy were organized in more than twenty cities across Bulgaria. The National Network for Children, an umbrella organization bringing together 152 NGOs, tried to counter the false claims but received no support from the authorities. Eventually, then prime minister Boyko Borisov announced that the draft had been withdrawn from public debate.
Romania’s draft child protection law came under similar pressure in 2023. The bill, introduced after sustained pressure from civil society and the European Union, sought to improve how authorities could intervene to keep vulnerable children at home. But politicians from parties such as Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), SOS Romania and the National Liberal Party (PNL) claimed the opposite: that the authorities were trying to take children away. As in Bulgaria, a disinformation campaign spread throughout Romania, triggering yet another wave of panic among the Roma community.
Vulnerability and disinformation
Roma communities are highly sensitive to narratives about children being taken away from parents. Gripped by fear, some parents in the cities of Sliven, Yambol and Karnobat in Bulgaria even withdrew their children from school for a short time. ‘It wasn’t only Roma communities that were misled’, notes Isaev, an expert on disinformation methods, ‘but there are certain narratives that resonate strongly among Roma.’
While the broader public was targeted through appeals to parental anxiety, the messages aimed at Roma tapped into a core value in their traditional culture. Family and children are central to the Roma value system: ‘Having a large family, having children, having a home for the extended family is extremely important for Roma, both culturally and emotionally,’ Isaev explains.
Research on the subject suggests that Roma communities are exposed to two main types of disinformation. On the one hand, they are the target of racist narratives directed at the majority population. These include the idea that Roma migrate abroad to steal rather than to work, or that, because Roma have more children, they will eventually outnumber and absorb the majority.
On the other hand, Roma communities are also vulnerable to propaganda campaigns that come from within their own circles. Their vulnerability stems largely from high levels of illiteracy and from a deeply damaged relationship with the authorities and the media. ‘The education system does not foster critical thinking – the ability to look critically at information and to research it in a serious way’, Isaev stresses. ‘People simply accept whatever information circulates in the community, often channelled through television.’
According to Isaev, disinformation in the region is not only a weapon wielded by Russia but also comes from the West and spreads through evangelical communities with ties to the US. Many voices within Bulgaria’s evangelical communities called for a boycott of the National Child Strategy. Later, the same communities proved receptive to disinformation about COVID‑19 and to the US cult that formed around president Donald Trump.
‘Evangelical churches have played a significant role in the development and progress of Roma communities in Bulgaria over the past 15 to 20 years,’ says Isaev. ‘But beyond a certain point, they have overstepped their remit.’ The fact that almost anyone can become a pastor makes the church itself more vulnerable. Qualities once expected of a spiritual leader – above all, the ability to read scripture and to think in abstract terms – are no longer sufficient for today’s communities, who need leaders with rigorous critical‑thinking skills to navigate complex contemporary issues.
‘Right now, we can see information about Charlie Kirk being shared,’ says Isaev; we spoke just a few days after the assassination of the US far‑right influencer in September 2025. ‘We see people in ordinary Roma evangelical churches posting his quotes. Maybe they had never even heard of him before, but now they are spreading his ideas. They don’t even speak English, yet they share his quotes, which I find very bizarre.’
‘The attack is continuous,’ the activist says. ‘It never stops. There are peak moments and quieter periods.’ According to Isaev, disinformation narratives are simple: the West is bad, the East is good. These messages are amplified above all at key moments in Bulgaria’s European trajectory during, ‘for example, the adoption of the euro, accession to Schengen, or when the country is about to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.’
The forced separation of Roma families
In Bulgaria, the forced separation of Roma children from their families is a well‑documented problem, with some cases successfully challenged in court. ‘The threat of having their children taken away is very present in the minds and everyday experience of many parents,’ writes Simeon Brand, national coordinator of All Together in Dignity (ATD) Fourth World. ‘For them, the fear that child protection services will one day intervene and take their children is very real’.
In 2024, the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) published research showing that more than half of all children in state care in Bulgaria were of Roma origin, and that Roma children were at higher risk of being removed from their families and placed under state guardianship. Because the authors did not have access to official data disaggregated by ethnicity, they relied on interviews with social workers, community mediators and activists, as well as on field observations. ‘Given that Roma make up around 10 per cent of Bulgaria’s population, the fact that over 50 per cent of children in the child protection system are Roma indicates a significant over‑representation’, Pop notes.
The study also found that Roma families are more frequently monitored by social services, yet receive support far less often. ‘The system does not provide families with any form of support within a reasonable timeframe,’ says Pop. ‘This allows these children to end up in situations where separation can be implemented almost as an emergency measure.’
A survey conducted as part of the research showed that many parents live in constant fear that social services might take their children away, and that more than half of respondents believe social workers do not always act with the intention of keeping children within their families. Once in state care, Roma children and young people are rarely placed with foster families and usually remain in institutions.
Discrimination is visible not only in social‑work practice but also at the legislative level. ‘On paper, the overall legal framework looks fine, but if you look more closely you can identify extremely discriminatory elements that penalize Roma families and Roma children, as well as poor people more generally,’ Pop explains. For example, child benefits are conditional on vaccination or school attendance. ‘There is no recognition that Roma families face enormous obstacles in accessing these services. This problem is simply not acknowledged.’
A history of abuse
In 2024, Tomáš Zdechovský, a Czech member of the European Parliament, warned that Roma were being targeted by disinformation campaigns in countries such as Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, including by campaigns orchestrated by foreign nations like Russia. Zdechovský noted that, apart from the Czech Republic, none of these states had adopted specific measures to counter disinformation targeting Roma.
In the Czech Republic, a disinformation campaign erupted in June 2023, triggered by a real case: in the city of Brno, a Ukrainian man killed a young Roma man following an altercation. News of the killing sparked a wave of anti‑Ukrainian hatred, especially in local Roma communities, where anti‑Ukrainian narratives quickly took root. At the same time, social media circulated images of genuine incidents of discrimination in which Roma from Ukraine, fleeing the war, were treated as second‑class citizens.
‘The historical experience of Roma with discrimination and neglect by the authorities creates an environment in which people are more inclined to believe conspiracy theories,’ explains Zdeněk Ryšavý, editor‑in‑chief of the Czech publication Romea.cz.
This long history of discrimination, he argues, ‘often goes hand in hand with a sense that “nobody will help us, we have to rely on ourselves” and that elites act against ordinary people. In such an environment, a single emotionally charged story – for example, about a Roma person attacked by a Ukrainian – can spread rapidly, because it fits an already existing worldview.’
In the Brno case, the Czech state introduced a short‑term response focused specifically on tackling the surge of anti‑Ukrainian disinformation circulating in Roma communities. ‘It was more of an ad hoc, coordinated action aimed at solving an urgent problem,’ says Ryšavý. Although these narratives overlapped with the direction of Russian propaganda, the Czech authorities did not find evidence of direct Russian interference.
Anti-state and Russophile tendencies
Even so, these disinformation campaigns clearly did not emerge from nowhere. Narratives around the migration crisis, the COVID‑19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have all had an impact on Roma. ‘They were often spread by Roma influencers – “live‑streamers” – who adapted and amplified content from pro‑Russian outlets or other problematic sources, gaining a significant audience and influence over community opinion’, explains Ryšavý.
In Bulgaria, another narrative that resonates among the Roma community revolves around an idealized memory of the communist period. ‘Given that the communist era is deeply associated with Russia’, says Isaev, ‘if you feel nostalgic about that period, you may also harbour a certain sympathy for Russia. All these tactics are used to encourage people to share information against Ukraine – and sometimes against the EU and NATO.’
In the Czech Republic, most disinformation narratives targeting Roma in recent years have focused on anti‑Ukrainian propaganda – portraying Ukrainians as Nazis who benefit at the expense of Roma – as well as on anti‑EU rhetoric, attacks on NGOs and opposition to public‑health campaigns. All these narratives ‘exploit existing frustrations and socio‑economic hardships, making it easier to cultivate distrust of the state, the EU and civil society. They often spread via social networks, especially through live streams, where emotionally charged content reaches a wide audience,’ says Ryšavý.
The aim of these campaigns is to encourage people to endorse narratives aligned with Russia. For example, in the story that casts the EU as an enemy of the traditional family, ‘the idea is to push people’s sensitive buttons, to mobilize them so they help spread false information,’ says Isaev.
Resistance to disinformation campaigns is closely tied to the level of trust people have in state institutions and the media, notes a study by the Czech public radio station iROZHLAS.cz. And Roma tend to have far less trust in the police and the justice system than the majority population concludes a 2022 survey conducted in ten European countries by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). The reasons, researchers argue, lie both in the long history of abuses against Roma communities across Europe and the negative experiences of individuals with the police and public institutions.
Ryšavý points out that Roma communities do not respond to disinformation in a uniform way, partly because no community is homogeneous and partly because there are no surveys that systematically map their opinions and attitudes. ‘In the media and NGO sector, we often debate how Roma respond to disinformation, but in reality, we do not know exactly what most of them think,’ the Czech journalist explains. ‘Nobody has ever comprehensively asked them.’
The populist agenda
In August 2025, Maria Saioc, a county councillor for the right-wing AUR party in Constanța, Romania, posted a highly emotional video that she presented as evidence of a forced separation case. In a comment, she referred to the draft child protection law. ‘On 10 May 2023 there were protests in front of parliament, and I shouted back then, together with the protesters: “Firea, just so you know, we don’t sell our children!”’ Saioc wrote. ‘I told people what was going to happen, but the law passed and now we are seeing its effects.’ The video had garnered more than two million views before it was taken down.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, AUR leader George Simion carried out several visits to the Romanian diaspora, visiting both Romanians affected by floods in Spain and the Roma family whose case of forced separation had sparked violent protests in the UK. Footage showing children being forcibly removed by UK authorities, some of them handcuffed, had gone viral. While civil‑society actors condemned the way social services had handled the case and Roma activists in both countries worked with the authorities to defuse tensions, the situation triggered a new wave of fear in Roma communities, according to Anda Constantin from the Roma for Democracy Foundation. Although it was an isolated incident involving the diaspora and the British legal system, some people became convinced that their own children might be taken away – ‘because there is a constant drip, drip, drip that feeds this fear’, says Constantin.
‘From back home, you should know that someone is thinking of you, protecting you and, if it becomes possible, we will have to work extremely hard so that Romania – a rich country – can bring its citizens back home,’ said Simion, speaking from the Bejinaru family’s living room. Although Simion spoke publicly about the case and AUR claims credit for the children’s return to their family, Marcel Bejinaru does not feel he received meaningful support from them.
‘Mr George Simion did come, I can’t say he didn’t’, Bejinaru tells me, seemingly reluctant to go into detail. ‘He came, but I don’t know why’. In those tense days, he had hoped for firm backing from Romanian politicians, defending his position as a Romanian citizen before the British authorities. Pastor Viorel Bădărău, a relative of Bejinaru who worked with Roma for Democracy activists to help resolve the situation, is blunt about Simion’s role: ‘He probably came to promote himself – let’s be serious.’
Resisting disinformation
In July 2024, in its reply to Czech MEP Zdechovský’s question on disinformation targeting Roma communities, the European Commission acknowledged that it had no specific strategy to address the issue. Brussels nevertheless stressed that tackling online disinformation is a priority, pursued through the new EU Code of Practice on Disinformation and the tighter monitoring of political advertising.
Zdechovský criticized the Commission’s reply as inadequate in the face of today’s dangers and underlined the need for an EU‑level campaign against disinformation in Roma communities. ‘Education is always crucial, as is strengthening critical thinking,’ he told the Czech outlet Romea.cz. ‘Without supporting education and media literacy, we will not be able to increase Roma resilience to disinformation.’
In July 2025, Roma for Democracy reminded the European Union of the need to combat anti‑Roma racism. ‘Real security is not only about tanks and planes. It is about trust. It is about belonging. It is about every person feeling that they have a place and a future’, the activists wrote. ‘The inclusion of Roma is not just a moral issue. It is a strategic necessity.’
In Bulgaria, the National Child Strategy remains shelved by those in power. Civil society, however, has drawn lessons from the 2019 disinformation campaign and from the racist reactions to Roma and their struggles. ‘We live in a completely polarized world’, says Pop. ‘We need to be very smart about how we talk about certain issues.’
To keep the forced separation of Roma children on the national agenda, Tanya’s Dream Foundation, managed by Pop, has worked with the FrameWorks Institute to develop a strategic communication model for challenging prejudice against families separated by the authorities. The emphasis falls on the common good, on the importance of children growing up within their families and on supporting those families. ‘It is essentially about creating opportunities for dialogue,’ Pop says.
In Romania, there is still no national strategy to counter disinformation, whether among the majority population or among Roma. From time to time, however, workshops on disinformation and media literacy are organized through collaborations between NGOs and journalistic outlets. In 2023, in response to falsehoods surrounding the Romanian child protection law, both the Association of Roma Party Pro‑Europe and Roma for Education ran such workshops in Roma communities.
‘If we keep marginalizing these people, we are creating a national tragedy, one that is already unfolding’, says Constantin. ‘There are already two Romanias, just as there are two Americas. And people have gone through so much hardship to unite the principalities; it would be a shame if, after all this time, we were the ones to divide Romania.’
This article first appeared in Romanian cultural journal Scena9, which continues to document the problem of forced separation in Romania and the Roma diaspora. It was published as part of cross-border project The State Knows Best: How Europe’s Child Protection Systems Work for Migrant and Racialized Communities, funded by the Journalism Fund. Its translation into English and publication is supported by ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius.
Source: Eurozine – www.eurozine.com
