Decade-long struggle for the rights to the Bosnian language in RS: 'I respect theirs, but let them respect mine'

(Patria) - Children from Konjević Polje and other returnee areas in Zvornik, Milići, and Bratunac also started school today, attending classes in a makeshift facility in Nova Kasaba in order to exercise their right to study the national group of subjects and the Bosnian language, which is denied to them in schools in the RS.

The parents' struggle for their children to learn Bosnian, rather than Bosniak, has been ongoing for a full ten years. Everyone has forgotten them, both the state institutions in BiH and the international community, which has never reacted to the denial of children's rights to adequate education, writes BHRT.

Džemil Mustafić, a returnee to the village of Rašljeva, has three children. He is one of the many returnee parents who fought, even in front of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) building in Sarajevo back in 2013, for their children to have the right to the Bosnian language.

Neither the BiH authorities nor the international community ever helped them exercise their right in schools, so they were forced to enroll their children in Nova Kasaba, where they have been attending classes in a makeshift facility for ten years, according to the curriculum of the Sarajevo Canton.

- I care. If I didn't care, I wouldn't drive my children 13 kilometers here, when the school down there is five kilometers away. I fought for the Bosnian language, not for my child to learn Serbian.

Respect, I respect theirs, but let them respect mine too. I want to have my right here too, and I should have it as a citizen - says Mustafić.

Aid Muminović has four children, and because his children go to school in Nova Kasaba, he gives up a child allowance of 750 KM every month so that his children can learn the Bosnian language.

As a returnee, other rights have also been denied to him. His son, a child with developmental difficulties, was unable to exercise his right to regular schooling in Drinjača, but in Nova Kasaba the teachers immediately accepted him, and he has been there for eight years.

- One child of Serbian nationality from Kamenica also goes with the same difficulties. If they can take him, they can't take mine. I didn't even look for another school anymore. So you also had to give up these 750 marks just because your children go to school here - says Muminović.

And indeed, politics, almost thirty years after the war, continues to play with the lives of these people and their children. And although they returned to their land more than twenty years ago, they are still considered returnees, whose rights are decided far away from them.

For ten years now, both the BiH authorities and the international community have allowed children to attend classes in a makeshift educational center.

- There is an insufficient number of classrooms, no hall, simply no playground, and the main road is right next to it. Children are exposed to dangers. But it's simply that someone is denying me the right to choose which language I will learn.

So, if I can learn Russian and English, but not my mother tongue. This has been imposed by this politics, how should I say. National politics, which leads neither the entire people nor the entire society in any direction. It causes harm to the entire society - says one of the parents, Adis Mehić.

Instead of today being the happiest day of the year for children and parents, for many it is full of uncertainty about their future. They have been denied the right to their mother tongue, and then also material rights.

What other rights must children be deprived of, for the huge non-governmental sector and institutions with the prefix of human rights protection to take care of students and young returnee families in Zvornik, Milići, Bratunac, Srebrenica, but also in other places in the RS facing the same problem.