Information Service of TERROR OVER THE ONLY CANONIC BISHOP IN MACEDONIA CONTINUES
According to the information which the Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church obtained from the seat of the Metropolitanate of Veles-Povardarje, any contact with the Metropolitan has been forbidden in the municipal court in Bitolj. His Eminence Jovan has deeply been shocked by the very act of arrest. Such a treatment of the only legitimate bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church is an appalling one. Bishops were arrested in such a manner only in communist time, and now Macedonian authorities continue doing the same. Apart from that, it starts to be a frequent occurrence that bishops, priests and professors of the Faculty of Theology and of the seminaries of the Serbian Orthodox Church from Serbia and Montenegro are being forbidden from travelling through Macedonia, which obviously shows the hostile attitude of the Macedonian authorities towards the Serbian Orthodox Church, as well as anarchy and disregard of the most elementary norms of the civilised and democratic world. |
Criminal Council of the Appellate Court in Bitolj refused the complaint lodged
by his Eminence Jovan Metropolitan of Veles-Povardarje, Exarch of the Serbian Patriarch in
the Archdiocese of Ochrid, regarding the detention lasting for 5 days to which the
Metropolitan was sentenced on Monday, July 21, 2003.