On the left are the leaders of the “Xhemajl Kada” school, on the right are the parents of alledegly the beaten children
On September 13, 2023, in Pejë, two eighth grade Bosniak students were physically assaulted by seven Albanian pupils from the same school because the Bosniak children refused to pay the Albanian kids money. However, the event as such is not the key phenomenon addressed in the findings of the research show “Betimi për Drejtësi”. According to these findings, the school-police-prosecutor triangle failed to deal with the case in a professional and dignified manner, thus committing a series of procedural and ethical violations.
When the parents of the beaten children take their children to the police station in Peja, police officials mistreat the two Bosnian children by making them wait a long time to give statements about the incident and not providing them with a travel vehicle for a medical examination. The children are sent to school by one of the children’s mothers, Nadija Agovic. The prosecution does not give an answer as to whether or not it managed to secure the security footage of the market or of the school yard. The case does not appear in the 24-hour police report on any of the days of that week or the following week during which the incident took place; the case is delegated to another policeman with a long delay.
The principal of the “Xhemajl Kada” school, Sylë Peli, the school where all the students involved in the beatings attend, does not hesitate to call exclusively and several times label the Bosnian students as “problematic,” and when asked to provide evidence supporting this classification, Peli provides none. The principal of the school also, to put it mildly, alludes to the fact that the students ran away from the lessons when the incident occurred and that the beating occurred after the end of the lesson, even though the report of the relevant investigating police officer indicates that the incident occurred during the long break. Parents of beaten children remain convinced that if their children did not belong to a minority community, such as the Bosniak community in Kosovo, they would be treated without neglect and discrimination and that justice for their children has been delayed.
It may seem like a normal schoolyard brawl involving no underlying ethnic or racial bias occurred when two students were beaten by other students from the same school. However, the parents of the victims, Nadija Agovic and Ahmed Sijaric, are claiming that the Peja police station and its employees were negligent, violated their rights, and left their children to wait in the hallway for over four hours before interviewing them. According to Mother Agovic-Hodzic, it was necessary for her to use her personal vehicle to transport the children from the hospital to the police station because the police station in Peja did not provide an official car to send the acclaimed victims for the medical examination and that they had to wait until the end of the relevant shift in order to be interviewed. Mother Agovic-Hodzic says that she had to send and return the children from the hospital to the police station in her own car.
“We waited in the corridor at the station, from one to three o’clock, during this time the child went to the police toilet two or three times with cold water thrown on his face, they were not well at all, they had body injuries”, Agovic said.
Nadija Agovic, the mother of one of the harassed kids/ Credits: Betimi per Drejtesi
“I told them that a patrol should come get the child for a medical examination because he is not well. Neither did they find a car nor did they offer an office for us to wait there for the child to calm down. He has been injured and was feeling nervous. Both kids were afraid of this situation. I waited in the corridor until 3 o’clock, and then I proposed to take the kids to the hospital in my private car. We took the children with the father of the second victim and went to the hospital for a medical examination. When we finished with the medical examination, we went back to the police station in Peja. I thought, is someone going to deal with this case? We continued to wait until 4:20 in the same corridor in the police station in Peja. They haven’t found a place to sit my child down, to calm him down a bit, Agovic continued to say for the investigative research conducted by Betimi per Drejtesi.
The parents of the children have mentioned names when making claims about each violation they consider was done. The “Betimi per Drejtesi” team has asked each of the names given by the parents about the claims made, but everyone has refused to talk about the case or respond to such claims with the excuse that since the case involves minor parties, they cannot provide any details except for the investigative police officer Kastriot Kasapi, who admits that he took the case too late and that when he went to look for the security footage, he found none.
Police officer Kastriot Kastrati had admitted during October that he took the case too late, underscoring this several times and saying that “I took the case too late, too late, not only late, but too late, and I have tried my best to identify any additional action that should be taken to not leave anything out. This is the ideal”, said the police officer during a phone call.
The same medium in Kosovo said that they have also tried to get an answer on the case from the police information office in Peja and from the Basic Prosecutor’s Office of Peja, but without any result.
The parent of the Sijaric child, Ahmed Sijaric, says that although they themselves as parents were interested in making sure that the security footage existed, no one went to get it in time, and that the delay in requesting this footage from those who have access to it, that is, the authorized officials, was intentional, since according to him, the institutional officials did not ask for it, at least not in time.
“I introduced myself to the school director and told him I am in the same profession; I work in education, and we have cameras in front of the school, outside and inside, and I asked him to release the cameras and that he would be able to see which children were there. He said the cameras don’t work, and that was the end of the conversation. Hodzic’s mother, Nadija, went to the Delta Market and asked. They told her that their cameras work, but they can give them to official people at their request. Well, it was dragged on for seven to 10 days, and now the school and the market say that the recordings were deleted. Both the school and the market said that the footage and recordings were deleted. The date, time, and hour are marked on the camera system, so one can see how the students were involved. Although someone has an interest in hiding, destroying, and eliminating these proves, said Sijaric.
Ahmed Sijaric, the parent of the other Bosniak child, allegedly beaten in the beating/ Credits: Betimi per Drejtesi
The one-sidedness of the principal of the “Xhemajl Kada” school, Sylë Peli, does not begin nor end where he insists throughout the interview that the Bosniak students were necessarily “problematic” or that they used unkind words when they refused to give money to the Albanian students, even though in the informative report of the police regarding the case none of this is said nor true, and none of this is indicated by the investigating policeman, Abedin Krasniqi. Moreover, when the principal is asked to provide clear evidence on what he says about the Bosniak students in the case, whom he constantly describes as truly problematic and not regular in lectures, Peli refuses to provide evidence because, when challenged with the question of whether the team of “Betimi per Drejtesi” could access any evidence that proves his claims, he stutteringly says that on the relevant day this will not be possible for completely irrelevant reasons. The principal never sends anything that proves his claims. It must be mentioned that being problematic or not does not make the act of violence against someone justifiable or acceptable; this baseless remark of the director only strengthens his one-sidedness and labeling approach to the parties involved in the case.
“The Bosniak children have not been better either; they are of the same category: problematic; they have several remarks on this aspect. Kids fight with one another; there is no reason for making this such a dramatic case, said principal Peli.
Principal Peli also assumes incorrectly that the Bosniak students skipped classes when the fight happened, meaning they were supposed to be in classes but were outside instead. According to the police report, the beating happened during the school break. Showing this other assumption, even if correct in nature, was, to say the least, inappropriate.
“My assumption is that they skipped classes when that happened,” told Peli, among others.
Syle Peli, the principal of the elementary school in Peja “Xhemajl Kada”/ Credits: Betimi per Drejtesi
Principal Peli has admitted to not being present the day that the event took place, which automatically brings the responsibilities regarding the school as an institution for the time being to the deputy principal of the school, Jehona Nallbani.
Asked when the investigating or police officials came to look for the cameras, Deputy Principal Jehona Nallbani made a surprising comment, initially refusing to comment on whether or not the police came to ask for the security footage, praising the work of the police and saying that she does not know whether or not they requested these images, but she admits that if they were to request them from someone, they would have to request them from her in the case of the principal’s absence.
The deputy principal of “Xhemajl Kada”, Jehona Nallbani/ Credits: Betimi per Drejtesi
The journalist (Hanmie Lohaj): Did they come to ask for the camera footage?
The deputy director (Jehona Nallbani): They came and did their work in the best way possible; they have gathered all the information needed.
The journalist: Okay, what about the camera footage specifically? Have they asked for it?
The deputy director of the school: I don’t know.
The journalist: You don’t know? If they were to ask for the camera footage, from whom were they supposed to get it?
The deputy director of the school: from me or from the principle.
Hence, the principal confirmed he was not present the day the case took place, and the days after, it is safe to say that the people from the police or the prosecutor’s office did not come to ask for the security cameras; hence, the deputy principal, Nallbani, did not confirm they did.
As an epilogue, we understand that it was the deputy director who was in charge on the day of the event, as a result of the director going on vacation in mid-September. The inconsistency of the director’s and deputy’s statements is absolute. When the principal was asked whether the deputy principal had looked at the cameras related to the parents’ claims that the beating of their children continued from the market to the school yard, he said no, while the deputy principal, Jehona, said yes, that she had checked the camera footage.
The journalist asks the principal: Has the deputy principal checked the cameras? Or has she checked and not saved them?
Principal Peli: No, she has not seen them. I am telling you she has not seen them because the police came and took them, and we didn’t deal with the case afterwards.
Whereas when the journalist asked the deputy principal if she had viewed the cameras or not, she said she had.
The journalist: Have you seen the cameras?
Deputy principal Nallbani: Yes, I have.
“Xhemajl Kada” school is the school with the most students from minority communities in Peja and one of the schools with the most diversity in terms of the number of ethnic communities in Kosovo. Students from the Roma, Ashkali, Egyptian, and Bosnian communities have traditionally attended classes here. According to the statistics presented by the principal of the same school, Sylë Peli, “Xhemajl Kada,” has a total of 1219 students, of which 51 are Roma, 16 are Ashkali, 67 are Egyptian, and 87 are Bosnian, respectively, in the Bosnian parallels, as well as 47 students from the Roma, Ashkali, and Egypt communities who are part of the intensive learning program. Despite these numbers, Perspektiva has learned that discrimination is quite present in this institution and that many parents from these minority communities are not pleased with how their children are treated, with special emphasis from the top, that is, from the heads of this educational institution. This discrimination has resulted in a decrease in the number of students from these non-majority communities in this school. As contacted by Perspektiva, director Peli confirms this by saying that:
“At the moment, according to statistics, each year the number of Bosniak students is decreasing. From preschool to ninth grade, we have 87 Bosniak students in total, whereas from the Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptian community, we have 181 students”, said Peli.
The principal has said that he released from school for a week the Albanian students who are suspected to have beaten the Bosniak kids. The parents of the Bosniak children say this has never been the case. The principal of the school has refused to provide any document or official paper indicating that such a thing has taken place. Let us say, according to the regulations in Kosovo, when a student harasses another student, he must be removed from school for one to three months; however, principal Peli says he removed the Albanian students involved in this case for a week; hence, as he said, “I could not do anything else; those were my all competences”.
More than a month has passed since the publication of these findings from Betimi per Drejtesi. Perspektiva has contacted the parents of both Bosniak students, and they say that nothing has been done toward the case in which their children are involved. Perspektiva has tried to contact those institutions, but none have answered, rejecting to speak of what they did (not) do. Nadija Agovic, as a mother and a citizen of Kosovo, says that she truly believes that if her child were not a Bosniak, he and his case would be treated differently.
