OPINION

The opinion was issued in the proceedings regarding the complaint of the National Council of the Bosniak National Minority against the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In the complaint and supplement to the complaint, it was stated that the information system for data entry used in the police administrations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs does not provide for the option of choosing the Bosnian language and the Latin script when creating and submitting requests for the creation of personal documents, which is why the issuance of public documents in Bosnian language is not available to Bosniaks who live in the territory of police administrations, i.e. police stations in Novi Pazar, Tutin, Sjenica and Prijepolje, where the Bosnian language and the Latin script are in official use. In the statement of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it was specified that the Ministry issues ID cards in the language and script of national minorities, namely, the ID card form is printed trilingually at the request of members of a national minority: in the Serbian language, in the Cyrillic script, in English, and in the language and script of the national minority whose official use is prescribed by the municipal statute, whereas data on the name and surname of a person, a member of a national minority, is entered in the identity card form in its original form, as entered in the birth certificate. It was further stated that on April 14, 2022, A.A. applied to the Police Department in Novi Pazar with a request for the issuance of an identity card, but that he withdrew the request with the explanation that he did not want to submit a request on which the language and script would be specified as “Bosniak”, but insisted that the “Bosnian” language be specified on the request. It was further stated that subsequently activities were undertaken so that in the territory of the municipalities in which the official use of the Bosnian language is established by the Municipal Statute, members of the Bosniak national minority can apply for and receive identity cards, if they wish, in the Bosnian language and script, as well as that there was a technical error in the name of the language in the nomenclature of the application used to issue identity cards and now the item “language and script – Bosnian” exists in the system. During the proceedings, the Commissioner determined that there was a technical error in the name of the language, and that it was not a different language, as well as that the Rulebook on the Identity Card does not prescribe the form of the request for the issuance of an identity card, but prescribes that the identity card is issued upon a written request, and that the request states the language and script in which the labels of the data the ID card form contains should be entered, as well as the language and script in which the name and surname should be entered, and that it is indisputable that the label by which the language of the national minority is marked in the internal application the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which only employees of the Ministry have access to, did not prevent citizens from submitting a request for the issuance of an identity card in the language and script of the national minority, that is, it could not mislead them that it is not possible to issue an identity card in the language of the Bosniak national minority that is in official use in a specific local self-government unit. Upon the proceedings, the Commissioner issued the opinion that the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not violate the provisions of the Law on Prohibition of Discrimination when issuing public documents in the language of the Bosniak national minority.

COMMISSIONER FOR THE PROTECTION OF EQUALITY

Brankica Janković