Bosnian Genocide Survivor Fired as Teacher in Luxembourg Over Pro-Palestine Posts
Fatima Kurtic says her Instagram posts criticised the Israeli regime, not Jewish people, and is challenging her dismissal in court
A primary school teacher in Luxembourg who survived the Bosnian genocide has been dismissed after publicly criticising the killing of children in Gaza on social media and speaking out against Israeli conduct in the war-torn territory.
Luxembourg’s Ministry of National Education said the decision against Fatima Kurtic was taken over posts it considered anti-Semitic. Kurtic rejects that characterisation, saying her posts were directed at the Israeli regime and Zionism rather than at Jewish people, and that her advocacy has always been against war crimes and the killing of innocent civilians.
Following her dismissal, students, parents, and supporters organised peaceful demonstrations calling for justice and her reinstatement.
‘This violates my freedom of expression’
Kurtic, a Bosnian refugee, arrived in Luxembourg in 2002 at around eight years old and spent four years living in a refugee camp. She argues that her removal by the ministry breaches her right to freedom of expression, insisting her posts conveyed support for Palestinians and opposition to the assault on Gaza, and contained nothing targeting Jewish people or Judaism — only criticism of the actions of the Israeli government.
Losing her job, she said, would not stop her advocating for Palestine or speaking out about what she described as the atrocities in the occupied territories. She does not accept the dismissal and, together with her lawyer, has formally appealed her termination in court, where her attorney argues that the evidence presented by the ministry does not justify her removal.
A viral boycott campaign
Kurtic, who has more than 111,000 followers on Instagram, has also called for a boycott of the Luxembourg-based firm Grosbusch, which sells dates produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Her dismissal, she said, came without any prior warning, and followed a coordinated campaign against her after an account of how she had persuaded one of Luxembourg’s major retailers to stop selling Israeli products went viral. She stressed that she had never brought her political activism into the classroom, and said the ministry had accessed her private social media account, used screenshots of her posts to build a case against her, and in doing so jeopardised her ability to teach elsewhere.
Reference: PressTv