Keston
News Service - February 2002
Posted 25 February 2002 on RELIGIOSCOPE
Since
the arrival of NATO forces in Kosovo in mid-June 1999, some
108 Serbian Orthodox churches in the province have been
destroyed or vandalised; the work, according to the Serbian
Orthodox Church, of Albanian extremists. At present, these
churches are under the protection of KFOR, the international
Kosovo Force, but there are worrying signs that Kosovo's
Serbian religious and cultural heritage is low on the international
list of priorities.
In
the latest edition of Crucified Kosovo, a book published
by the Raska and Prizren diocese documenting these developments,
it is alleged that the destruction of Orthodox sites is
carried out in eight distinct phases. These are: 1) shattering
due to NATO action between 23 March and 11 June 1999; 2)
looting after 13 June 1999; 3) desecration; 4) burning;
5) initial blasting with explosives; 6) blasting of surviving
parts; 7) removal of building materials; and 8) clearance
of terrain.
Church
representatives believe that the attacks are part of a systematic
campaign to eradicate Serb Orthodox presence in the province,
rather than simply acts of blind revenge. In the Kosovar
Albanians' struggle for a separate state, according to Fr
Sava Janjic of the Decani Monastery, "the Serbian
Orthodox Church is the last anchor of Serbian presence here,
so we are strategically dangerous to them." In
one of only two mixed Serb/Albanian villages, Osojane (in
Albanian Osojan), for example, the Church of St Nicholas,
built in 1986, was "dynamited in a professional
way" some time after the arrival of NATO forces,
according to Sister Mikhaela of Pec Patriarchate Convent.
Since the most important structural parts of the building
had been targeted, she explained, it is now unsafe and parishioners
are forbidden to enter the building: "It will have
to be torn down."
Damage
to civilian properties
Keston
has not been able to obtain any independent confirmation
of the progressive and systematic destruction of Orthodox
churches in particular, but on 24 October 2001 the programme
coordinator of the United Methodist Committee on Relief,
Mary Mayall, outlined a similar process occurring to abandoned
Serbian civilian properties, In preparation for the return
of the Serb population to the second of the two mixed Serb/
Albanian villages, Ljestar (Leshtar), the Committee chose
houses which had sustained only minor damage for rebuilding.
However , when they returned to the village a few weeks
later whole walls were missing from these houses. Local
Albanians, Mary Mayall said, put this new damage down to
"deterioration".
The
misuse or destruction of religious sites is nothing new
in the territory of former Yugoslavia. Similar reports have
come from Bosnia and Macedonia, Orthodox and Islamic
sites have been targeted by extremists on both sides. Nevertheless,
in Kosovo, the majority of pre-sixteenth-century monuments
are Orthodox, and it is these priceless religious and cultural
sites which are under threat.
Priceless
heritage under threat
The
Serbian Orthodox Church reports that 33 pre-sixteenth-century
churches were seriously damaged or destroyed by Albanian
extremists after the arrival of NATO troops in June 1999.
Some 70 remain intact. According to Mirjana Menkovic of
the Mnemosyne Centre for the Protection of Cultural Heritage
in Kosovo and Metohia, the five most important such sites
are the thirteenth-century Pec Patriarchate, the fourteenth-century
Decani Monastery, Gracanica Monastery, the Church of the
Mother of God in Ljeviska, Prizren, and the village of Velika
Hoca, where four of the 13 churches date from the fourteenth
century. She believes they are undoubtedly on a par with
Studenica Monastery in Serbia, which was included on the
list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1988. None of those
cited by Menkovic, however, is currently on UNESCO's list,
and a May 2001 report aiming "to define schedules
for UNESCO interventions, for protection and restoration
of the cultural heritage" of the province includes
Orthodox sites in just two of its ten proposed restoration/
rehabilitation projects. Menkovic described this report
to Keston as "shameless".
Incomplete
report
In
the report, its author, architectural adviser Carlo Blasi,
informed the UNESCO representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Colin Kaiser, that he had visited 'all main sites and monuments'
in Kosovo (some 40 are on his list), among them just six
Orthodox sites - the five cited by Menkovic and the "nice"
eighteenth-century Church of St George in Prizren. The two
restoration/rehabilitation projects involving Orthodox sites
proposed the allocation of 500,000 deutschmarks (225,000
us dollars or 160,000 UK pounds) to Decani Monastery and
a total of 150,000 deutschmarks (68,000 US dollars or 48,000
UK pounds) to four unspecified churches in the village of
Velika Hoca. By contrast, four of the nine mosques visited
by Blasi (ranging from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries)
are proposed allocation of individual restoration projects.
Gracanica, Pec Patriarchate and the Church of the Mother
of God in Ljeviska are absent from the project list, as
are dozens of other early medieval Orthodox sites.
Although
supposedly a scientific document, Blasi's report appears
inconsistent. It argues that 'places and monuments to which
UNESCO intervention now seems inappropriate were not included,
such as buildings completely destroyed and ones already
under restoration'. However, Blasi proposes the allocation
of 500 000 deutschmarks for the restoration of Decani's
mosque, which a 2000 publication produced by Kosovo's Islamic
community, Serbian Barbarities Against Islamic Monuments
in Kosova, claims "was burnt completely in 1998".
Accompanying photographs confirm that burnt and ruined walls
are all that is left of the main building.
While
the report argues that restoration of the Decani mosque
is important "because of the monument's historical
importance and religious reasons", no explanation
is given for the non-inclusion of other sites of historical
and religious importance, many of which are more ancient
and/ or in a condition not excluded by the report as ineligible
for funding. Andreas Szolgyemi, adviser to the Organisation
for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) on religious
issues in Kosovo, said that he had contacted UNESCO about
protection of religious sites in the spring of 2000, but
"they were very, very uninterested".
On
the other hand, on 22 November Horst Goedicke, the chairman
of UNESCO's Intersectoral Working Group on south-east Europe,
described the protection and restoration of the Orthodox
churches in Kosovo as a "burning issue".
A UNESCO fact-finding mission would visit Kosovo within
the next three months. Regarding the possibility of protection
of such sites, Goedicke explained that UNESCO itself does
not propose their inclusion on the organisation's World
Heritage List: "The initiative to put sites on the
World Heritage List must emanate from the national government
on whose territory the site is located." It was
the responsibility of the Yugoslav government, he said,
but UNESCO had to date not received any such request from
them.
Orthodox
sites under guard
In
the meantime, the Orthodox sites are still protected by
KFOR. According to Bob Charmbury, United Nations Mission
in Kosovo (UNMIK) deputy head of Pec regional administration,
all Orthodox churches "except lose already destroyed"
were under individual KFOR guard, including those not in
use if located in an Albanian area. If they were in a Serb
enclave, he added, they would not be guarded separately.
On 25 October a KFOR spokesman, British Ministry of Defence
employee Tim Zillessen, told Keston that KFOR is currently
providing protection for 140 religious sites 24 hours a
day.
''Under
siege"
In
the village of Gracanica (Ulpiana) - which is a Serb enclave
- Keston indeed observed only a single Swedish KFOR officer
outside the gates of Gracanica Monastery, while the roads
into the village are controlled by substantial military
checkpoints, Both Pec Patriarchate Convent and Decani Monastery
have individual checkpoints at the beginning of the track
leading to their entrances, which, in Decani's case, is
guarded by some ten Italian tanks. The ruins of the Church
of the Holy Trinity by the Pec-Pristina road, by contrast,
are entirely deserted.
While
Keston encountered high praise among church representatives
for the Italian KFOR - who, according to Fr Sava, are providing
"not just physical security bu t also assistance
everywhere where it is missing" - Mirjana Menkovic
of the Mnemosyne Centre pointed out that destruction was
continuing because the international authorities administering
Kosovo had given "no signal to the Albanian community
that it is unacceptable." As to arresting or prosecuting
those responsible for the destruction, Bob Charmbury accepts
that this is at best unlikely: "You wouldn't find
them impossible".
For
the present, Serbian Orthodox religious sites and communities
such as the Decani monastery are existing under siege. Fr
Sava joked:
"Decani
monastery is our island. The KFOR checkpoint at the gate
is our port, from which we take our ferry - an armoured
car - across a sea containing dangerous piranhas."
Geraldine
Fagan and Branko Bjelejac
Source: Keston Institute
<http://www.keston.org>
This article was first published in Frontier,
N° 1/2002, pp. 6-8. Frontier is published
by Keston Institute, a charity monitoring religious freedom
and researching religious communities in postcommunist and
communist countries. A minimum donation of £12 secures
six issues of Frontier.
Address: Keston Institute, 38 St Aldates,
Oxford, OX1 1BN, United Kingdom.
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