The Srebrenica Basic Court ordered the "Petar Kocic" Elementary School in Konjevic Polje to enable Bosniak students to study the Bosnian language and the Latin alphabet, Radio Free Europe reported Monday. The school is located in the municipality of Bratunac, in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska (RS) entity. 

“With the aforementioned verdict, the Court fully accepted the claim of the plaintiffs, and the existence of discrimination was determined and its elimination was ordered,” reads the decision of the Basic Court, made on December 19.

This is a first-instance verdict that can be appealed to at the District Court in Bijeljina, and the plaintiffs are the parents of the children in this school.

“This is yet another of the countless court decisions that we received from 2013 to date, regarding the discrimination of our children by the relevant RS Ministry and the Elementary School ‘Petar Kocic’ from Konjevic Polje. This is a very brave Court decision, historic for us. We have received verdicts in our favour before, but they were not respected. I expect that something similar will happen this time as well,” Muhizin Omerovic, the representative of the parents of students from Konjevic Polje, told Radio Free Europe.

From 2014 to date, children have attended school in Nova Kasaba, in the east of Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to the curriculum of the Federation (FBiH) entity.

Their teacher came from Serbia and taught Serbian language in a school where all the children are of Bosniak ethnicity.

On June 23 last year, the BiH Constitutional Court annulled the verdict of the RS Supreme Court, which denied the existence of discrimination in access to education for students of the Bosniak returnee community in Konjević Polje.

The appeal to the BiH Constitutional Court was submitted by a group of parents of students from the Konjevic Polje Regional School at the “Petar Kocic” Primary School in Kravica.

The RS Supreme Court has not yet implemented the BiH Constitutional Court decision.