Bosnian Pupils Rally Against Ethnic Segregation in Schools

The pupils’ protest in Travnik.

Pupils from Jajce travelled to the town of Travnik on Tuesday to protest against ethnic segregation in Bosnia’s schools, days after winning a tough year-long battle against the practice in their hometown.

Some 100 pupils from Jajce, Travnik, Novi Travnik, Bugojno, Fojnica, Sarajevo, Tuzla and Zenica held up banners with slogans like “Segregation is a bad investment” and “We are here to create a future, not to repeat the past”.

They were protesting against a Bosnian practice known as ‘two schools under one roof’, a system under which pupils of different ethnicities are kept separate and learn from different ‘national’ curriculums – Bosniak, Croat or Serb.

A crowd of pupils had already gathered in front of the Central Bosnia Canton government building in Travnik before the students from Jajce arrived at noon. They were applauded and greeted as heroes for their recent victory.

“They began a battle with someone who is much stronger and richer than them. They did not want to be hostages of the manipulative politics that our government leads,” a representative of the protesters said in a speech.

Radio Free Europe reported on Sunday that the education ministry of the Central Bosnia Canton has announced it will no longer set up a new segregated school in Jajce at which a Bosniak curriculum would be taught, due to the pressure from the pupils and international organisations such as the OSCE.

The Jajce students said they were happy they managed to prevent the establishment of the 58th segregated school in the Federation entity, but that they are aware there are still another 57 such schools in the entity.

“Grade schools in Jajce are divided, we attended them, and we are well aware of the dangers that ‘two schools under one roof’ are producing for the society of Jajce and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the present and in the future,” a statement from the Jajce pupils said.

Federation entity parliamentarian Dennis Gratz meanwhile proposed a law on Tuesday to ban segregation in schools in the entity.

“This is a rule that will unequivocally determine that every form of physical division of persons, especially students and professors during classes, extracurricular activities and breaks, is segregation and discrimination, and that the Federation has the competencies and the duty to ban such a practice – not from the perspective of education, but out of a duty to protect human rights and civic freedoms,” Gratz said.