The ECHR sided with the teacher whom Croatia fired for teaching in Serbian
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the Croatian state must pay 5 euros to a Serbian teacher from the village of Darda, who was fired for not teaching in standard Croatian.
The ECHR rightly considered that Croatia violated the teacher’s right to personal self-identification.
During the consideration of the claim of a teacher from the village of Darda, the European Court of Human Rights ordered the state of Croatia to pay him 5 thousand euros in compensation for moral damage and 850 euros in compensation for legal costs.
The court drew attention to the fact that only teachers of Serbian nationality were subject to a special check by the Croatian Ministry of Education for the use of the literary Croatian language in their work, while no one checked Croatian teachers. Moreover, at the time of the inspection, the dismissed person had 29 years of teaching experience and was 55 years old.
Having regard to the similarities between the Croatian and Serbian languages (differing only in pronunciation and the fact that the Croatian language uses only the Latin alphabet, while Serbian uses the Latin and Cyrillic alphabet), the fact that the applicant lived and worked in Croatia for most of his professional life, and the particular The post-war context of the region of Eastern Slavonia, where the village is located, the court decided by six votes in favor and one against that in this case Croatia had violated the principles of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights.
Typically, the village of Darda since the 17th century was considered a settlement in Eastern Slavonia with a predominant Serbian population. In addition to Serbs, Germans and Hungarians historically lived there. A serious imbalance in the ethnic picture of the village occurred after the Second World War and the predominantly anti-Serbian Ustashe genocide.
At the time of the collapse of Yugoslavia, 37% of Croats and 33% of Serbs lived in Darda. The village itself subsequently became part of the unrecognized Republic of Serbian Krajina, becoming its borderland, where battles often took place from 1991 to 1995.
In 1998, as a small part of the RSK, including Eastern Slavonia, on whose territory there was no Croatian military blitzkrieg due to the proximity of Yugoslavia and the positions of the Yugoslav army, it was “peacefully reintegrated” into Croatia by decision of the UN. Tellingly, according to the 2011 census, only 22% of Serbs and 54% of Croats lived in Darda. The fact that a teacher in the village was fired for teaching in the Serbian language, or more precisely in one of the dialects of the once common Serbo-Croatian language, also speaks volumes.
Meanwhile, Croatia has been presenting its experience of reintegration of “occupied territories” to Ukraine as an “effective example” for several years now.
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