Emine History

Thi story i created with veri popoluar and respetifol woman Lowyear Mircheva

The story came at the end of last year at Christmas. I was contacted by a woman who told me. The story of another woman who is as vulnerable as we can not imagine, so helpless, so locked behind stereotypes and bars that her voice would never have been heard unless someone gave her a hand. The woman who contacted me tried to reach out (including initiating a prosecution and at least moving the heroine from the narrative closer to her mother's village) but faced the fear of those not behind bars to to speak, to testify, to make a statement. Today we will try to give some power to this voice that goes beyond bars and stereotypes and asks to be heard. In italics below is a text that was sent to me by Genoveva Sotirova, a Bulgarian woman of Roma origin who graduated from the Law but is currently unemployed.

Now let's hear this quiet voice that overcomes spaces and fears to break the silence.

"Silence behind bars of a psychiatry [1]

I want to share a story of the lives of invisible women from minority groups. And to name the cowardice of the Bulgarian institutions. E.M. is 37 years old. She is a Bulgarian Turkish woman who returned after her father's death to her mother's village in O. A few years ago they lived relatively quietly. In 2016, harassment began by a neighbor. Harassment is sexual. No, there is no rape, but there are harsh insults and actions of a sexual nature demonstratingly performed in front of the woman's eyes - things that are very humiliating to the woman and she dares not do anything. And to whom to complain, the neighbor is far closer to her than the local government. E.M. has a property to which the neighbor has appetites. He has been through for years. Do not surrender, fight with stress and fear alone. Take care of your elderly mother. And the mother takes care of her - both of them stay together despite the lack of male support. In their community this is not easy. The lack of a man in the family makes women vulnerable, they feel unprotected. They are both poor, very poor. Their house is small, ruined.

As a result of stress and fear, EM. gradually develops a mental illness.

In 2018, somewhere in the last months of the year, the neighbor, according to EM's girlfriend, enjoying protection from the local authorities, through police pressure and threats, forced the mother to sign under some papers. The mother, moreover, can not read in Bulgarian and does not know what she has signed. Her experience was that she had no choice. There is a case. E.M. she was taken to prison there without knowing what was happening to her. Witnesses she does not know well tell the judge how dangerous it is. And so they "put her into the madhouse". In a city far from her birthplace.

EMM's mother many times attend social services and ask for support. But because it does not express itself well in Bulgarian, it is not met with understanding. She can not fill the papers she gives, she does not know the rules, and she does not know how to deal with the bureaucratic system. She does not get help to understand.

When she still managed to convince the services to check her home (a prerequisite for receiving social support), she received a new portion of humiliation.

When she said she wanted her daughter to come home, they said something like that

"Why is it for her to come back to this misery, see you have no wood yet?"

Do you know why I want the voice of E. to be heard? It's very simple.

When it's cold, no matter how much it does, it finds a way to light the stove and harvests birds to get warm.

This story makes me think about how much violence and pain she has experienced. For when you can not express what hurts you, you are closing in your imaginary world,

where only the birds can hear your sadness, see your tears.

When I think about EM. I realize that she lives in a closed community where everyone knows each other. There the woman's word does not cost anything, even more when it is poor, do not be the victim of sexual harassment. What is left to her but to go mad!

She is now in a psychiatric hospital. Physically, the side effects of drugs complicate her condition. Everyone she loves is far away, and birds are beyond bars, far away from her sight.

I am writing this to ask you to think about the pain of the invisible women, such as EM, an ethnic Turkish woman with psychic abnormalities.

And once she was a teacher and had dreams. "

This is one of those stories that make you quiet internally. Crying. You want to change something. You want to be heard.

A simple story about the human.

About human vulnerability and the ability of the soul to survive even where reason can not.

But beyond the emotion, or perhaps it is because of her and because before we are any professional, we are first men, we have to continue talking about the fact that prejudices destroy life, the bureaucratic attitude crushes, and power is arbitrary, when used to hurt and revoke rights. It does