Segregation of BiH Youth: Divide and Conquer

By Sead Omeragić

Montgomery in Alabama, USA in 1955. Racism still "reigned" in the American South. For example, Black people sat in the back of buses. If a white person entered, they would dutifully stand up and move to the back of the bus. Rosa Parks is the woman who, in December 1955, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. It was then that the famous Martin Luther King first emerged and called his people to boycott transportation in Montgomery.

It will soon be 52 years since that event. One simply cannot believe it: In Kiseljak, Bosniak children were told they had boarded a bus carrying Croatian children.

In two schools, located across the street from each other, students attend classes divided by nationality. One school follows the Bosnian curriculum, and the other follows the Croatian curriculum. The buses transport children an hour apart.  

Until recently, we spoke of apartheid in South Africa. After Nelson Mandela, racial and all other equality and tolerance prevailed there. Apartheid is being installed near Sarajevo in Kiseljak. But it exists all over Bosnia and Herzegovina. The concept of two schools under one roof is an invention of the Croatian national elite in BiH. Let's recall the problems in Stolac with two schools under one roof. What are the reasons for the Croatian national strategy to choose segregation in education? Although we have not had an answer to this, segregation, unfortunately, applies to both Bosniak and Croatian children. 

In cities with a Bosniak majority, schools with the Croatian national program have a much larger number of Bosniak children than Croatian children. On one occasion in Kiseljak, Croatian parents enrolled their child in a school with the Bosnian program, and then a real rebellion occurred. Croatian officials intervened, and the child was immediately unenrolled the next day and enrolled in the school with the Croatian curriculum.

For decades, Bosniaks and Croats attended school together in Central Bosnia, socialized, and their parents respected and helped each other. The new era brought divisions, which were forcibly initiated during the war when the intention was to separate these two peoples with firm borders. When it couldn't be done through war, today children are divided in schools, and even on buses.  

Croats, as an indigenous people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a people who have shown love for Bosnia and Herzegovina and proudly declared it their homeland, are today dividing everything that can and cannot be divided. Segregation can be racial, national, religious, and gender-based. In the constitutional and legal order of BiH, segregation does not exist. It does not exist in the historical memory of the Bosnian people either, but it is still forcibly imposed on people's lives, families, and privacy.

High school students from Jajce, both Bosniak and Croatian children together, took to the streets in protests demanding a unified school, without national or any other divisions. These high school students from Jajce received support, especially from foreign officials, but nothing significant has moved towards the future and life in peace and normal unity.

The situation with the Croatian side is similar to the situation with the Serbian side in Republika Srpska. There, the Bosnian language is not recognized or allowed. Schools in RS are decorated on the walls with pictures of Christian saints, especially Saint Sava. The curriculum only teaches about Serbian historical figures, and crimes against the Bosniak people and those who committed them are celebrated.

While in civilized countries children are taught new technologies, science, and tolerance, here the first and most important thing is to divide these children nationally and religiously, and then serve them subjects with content that will seal these divisions in their minds and souls.