On September 10, 2019, the District Court in East Sarajevo passed a historic final verdict for discrimination in the education process – THEY ARE GUILTY!
By: Bojan Bajić, public representative of student Slavko
The Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republika Srpska and the Public Institution High School Center Rudo were found GUILTY for: ‘discrimination against student Slavko Mršević by denying a student the right to attend classes at the beginning of 2016/2017 without issuing any formal act (in such a way that the principal and some professors forbade the student to enter the classroom, threatened to call the police, and later locked the door of the school), and failed to take measures to include students with special needs in regular classes. ‘
This is another victory of the ethical principle over unscrupulous know-nothings and manipulators in institutions who have forgotten that students are the purpose of their existence on the state budget. In years of struggle with rigid bureaucrats who interpret laws, regulations and codes of ethics in a thousand ways, but never in the right way, I have noticed one pattern of behavior of unethical officials:
- they always look at the situation from the point of view of the law and regulations, and not from the point of view of the child and his right to happiness and equality; that is why they misinterpret laws and regulations and that is why they will always be defeated in such cases;
- the law and code of ethics are primarily correctly interpreted through compassion for the child and work for the benefit of the child and not against the best interests of the child; there is no such law and rulebook that can be interpreted as expelling a child from school; if you have empathy and have never read a single law book, don’t worry about legal tricks and trivia and just trust your heart (if not petrified), help the child in any way that comes to mind and it will be in accordance with the law;
- that horrible twisted guild solidarity and collegiality; when one colleague violates the Code of Ethics and the law (in this case it was the school principal), then everyone else without thinking stands by his side to protect him; they thus turn collegiality into a conspiracy to cover up the work; they are unaware that they are thus undermining the ground beneath their feet;
- personally, for months before this lawsuit was filed, I begged the School, the professors, and the Ministry to come to their senses, not to allow a few individuals who had sinned to drag them in the wrong direction; I was amazed at the perseverance and madness of these bureaucrats; in such situations I often cannot discern whether they are stupid or insane or just pretending to be fools or manipulators and liars, but one thing has always been undisputed: their way of interpreting the law is so awkward that it is hard to put into words;
- you know the feeling when you explain your arguments to someone ten times and ask them to understand that the child should be returned to school, that the Code of Ethics and everything else must be respected, because otherwise they will lose their jobs if the child is harmed, and they will look you with that dull look and, like sheep, confidently continue to walk towards the abyss;
- we are now where we are; The court ruled that the Ministry and the School did not know how the law should be implemented; it is a frightening fact; now I am really interested in whether they will put finger on the forehead, whether they will step on the ball, admit the responsibility, send an apology to Slavko and his family, and conduct disciplinary proceedings against those responsible as required by law in such situations;
- at every stage we begged them to come to their senses so that things would not get worse; They have already done irreparable damage to Slavko and we are aware of that, but we will never stop persecuting them until they repent for the cosmic injustice they have done to the child; as long as they are united to protect each other from responsibility and avoid the punishment they deserve, we will continue to strike their unethical structures with an ethical sledgehammer and each blow will be heavier on them;
This verdict means a lot to Slavko and his family; the immoral coalition of ‘colleagues’ who protect each other to the detriment of the child has for a long time spread lies about the student and the family and thus managed to confuse the public with its machinery with incorrect information and misinterpretations of the law; it went so far that Minister Dane Malešević even told untruths about the child in the Republika Srpska Assembly, and the current director of the School, Tatomir Elez, threatened Slavko with the police if he continued to come to the school every morning;
That is why this verdict is a medicine for the soul of the afflicted family. Slavko stoically endured everything and proved his correctness. Congratulations to the judges on defending their profession and judicial ethics, it was probably not easy for them to judge the state system for committing discrimination. On behalf of the family, I would like to thank the organization ‘Vaša prava’, which led this litigation process.
