Srebrenica Pupils Who Published Serb Nationalist Photo Disciplined

Nine schoolboys at the First Elementary School in Srebrenica have been disciplined for misconduct after a photograph of them in fur hats doing Serb three-finger salutes, captioned 'Chetnik Brothers', was posted on Instagram, the Ministry of Education and Culture of Bosnia's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity announced on Thursday, according to the Klix.ba website.

The publication of the photograph sparked a protest outside the school on Wednesday, which was attended by around 100 parents of Bosniak pupils.

The protesting parents claimed that the photograph in which the pupils appeared to pose as Serb nationalist Chetniks promoted nationalism, hatred and discrimination at the school in Srebrenica.

The eastern Bosnian town, located in Republika Srpska, is notorious for the 1995 massacres of some 8,000 Bosniaks by Bosnian Serb forces, which have been classified by international court verdicts as genocide.

The Republika Srpska Ministry of Education and Culture said the school will take measures to prevent any further incident that "might endanger the security of schoolchildren or lead to discrimination".

The ministry said that the photograph was taken on Monday while the pupils were getting ready for a school play and their teachers were absent, but that no nationalist symbols were displayed during the staging of the play itself.

"The students wore traditional Serb folk costumes as an expression of our people's tradition and culture," the ministry said.

Mirnes Zahirovic, the head of the parents' council at the First Elementary School, claimed that the schoolboys in the photograph had been exposed to "sick ideologies" by nationalists who "manipulate history and glorify war criminals and fascists publicly on TV".

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