Bosnian students protest ethnic discrimination in schools

Record ID: 896013

  • Title: Bosnian students protest ethnic discrimination in schools
  • Date: 20th June 2017
  • Summary: TRAVNIK, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA (JUNE 20, 2017) (REUTERS) STUDENTS STANDING IN FRONT OF MUNICIPALITY BUILDING POLICE AND STUDENTS VARIOUS OF STUDENTS CHEERING STUDENTS HOLDING POSTERS POSTER READING - WE ARE HERE TO CREATE THE FUTURE, NOT TO REPEAT THE PAST VARIOUS OF STUDENTS CHEERING STUDENT'S REPRESENTATIVES ENTERING MUNICIPALITY BUILDING STUDENTS HOLDING POSTERS AND CHEERING (SOUNDBITE) (Bosnian) PROTEST ORGANISER, AMAR KUNDALIC, SAYING: "We have to learn about others, about their cultures and their way of life. Being together gives us the chance to prosper and it is the only way this multicultural country can prosper as well." (SOUNDBITE) (Bosnian) STUDENT ACTIVIST, FARUK GUTIC, SAYING: (REFERRING TO 54 EXISTING SCHOOLS WHERE CROAT AND BOSNIAK CHILDREN ATTEND SEPARATE CLASSES) "We have 54 divisions so far and investing in the 55th was the straw that broke the camel's back. We are here to send a message that young people don't want to leave this country and they want to be given a chance to live here." (SOUNDBITE) (Croatian) STUDENT ACTIVIST, ANDREJ JOVICIC, SAYING: "It is difficult to listen to my parents telling me how they went to the same school with their friends while me and my friends have to go to the separate schools." PROTESTERS GIRL USING MOBILE PHONE STUDENTS AT PROTEST POSTER READING (Bosnian) "FRIENDSHIP UNDER EMBARGO" STUDENTS HOLDING POSTER, READING (Bosnian) "APPLES AND PEARS CAN BE MIXED" STUDENTS AT PROTEST STUDENT ACTIVISTS HUGGING EACH OTHER (SOUNDBITE) (Bosnian) ARTIST AND ACTIVIST, DAMIR NIKSIC, SAYING: "This generation of young people will create a new generation of citizens of this country who will be the cosmopolitan generation, which will not just ideologically but biologically annul this artificial ongoing experiment in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has been historically and naturally a cosmopolitan country, with a cosmopolitan society." STUDENTS HOLDING BANNER
  • Embargoed: 4th July 2017 16:44
  • Keywords:
  • Location: TRAVNIK, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
  • City: TRAVNIK, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
  • Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • Topics: Race Relations / Ethnic Issues,Society/Social Issues
  • Reuters ID: LVA0016M31ET5
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: High school students and activists protested against ethnic segregation at schools in central Bosnia on Tuesday (June 20), after scoring an unprecedented victory against a government's decision to further divide them along ethnic lines.
    On Saturday (June 17), a group of Bosniak and Croat students from an ethnically-mixed secondary school in the town of Jajce have succeeded in their year-long fight and persuaded the regional government to revert its decision aiming to divide them in two separate ethnically-based schools.
    Emboldened by the first such victory by a grassroots movement against nationalist authorities, the young people gathered on Tuesday before the government building in Travnik to request the abolition of other schools where Bosniak and Croats attend separate classes in the same building.
    They held placards reading "Embargo to Friendship" and "Death to Politics, Freedom to Education".
    In Bosnia, where Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks represent so-called constituent people after the war of the 1990s, the education system is divided and each group has its own national curriculum. The children are taught Serb, Croat or Bosnian even though linguists say they are essentially one language.
    More than 20 years since the war between Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks ended, the reconciliation is slow and ad hoc solutions that were devised on interim basis after the war are firmly in place.
    Such are 54 so-called "Two schools under one roof", one of them in Jajce, in which the Croat and Bosniak children attend classes according to their respective national curricula in the same building but are physically separated and don't socialise.
    In Bosnia, where Bosniak, Croat and Serb nationalist parties base their power on distrust of each other, all attempts that were aimed at unification of education have so far failed.
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