Serbian Orthodox Church - News 24.3.2004.

NEWS

Information Service of
the Serbian Orthodox Church
March 24, 2004

PRESIDENT MAROVIC VISITS PATRIARCH PAVLE

(BELGRADE) - 24 March 2004 - His Holiness Serbian Patriarch Pavle, together with His Eminence Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and the Littoral, a member of the Holy Synod of Bishops, and the Patriarch's closest co-workers, received today in the Patriarchate in Belgrade, Mr. Svetozar Marovic, President of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, together with his entourage.

Mr. Marovic familiarized His Holiness with the domestic and international action undertaken by the State Union for the defense of the Kosovo and Metohija Serbs, as well as quelling the most recent terrorist attacks on their lives, shrines and homes.

During the conversation it was noted that there is a need to advance the cooperation between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the State Union.

POLICEMEN KILLED IN KOSOVO ATTACK

UN police officer and a local policeman have been killed in Kosovo, local police and the UN say. The two were shot dead in their UN vehicle in the village of Luzane, north of the capital, Pristina.

Kosovo in Serbia, last week saw some of the worst ethnic clashes in more than four years, in which 28 people died.

The incident comes on the fifth anniversary of the Nato air strikes. Hundreds of others from both Serbian and ethnic Albanian communities were injured in last week's clashes after the violence started in the divided town of Mitrovica.

As the clashes spread across the province, more than 3,000 Serbs fled their homes and churches attacked by ethnic Albanian mobs. Nato rushed in 2,000 more troops to help quell the violence. According to a UN police spokesman, the ambush took place after dark on Tuesday evening. A clearly marked UN patrol car with three officers and an interpreter
was travelling south towards Pristina from the town of Podujevo. It came under fire in a rural area from at least one gunman and crashed into the hillside, killing the two police officers.

INDEPENDENT: ALBANIANS HAVE STOLEN EVERYTHING. TVS, TELEPHONES, FURNITURE, EVEN CLOTHES'

Kosovo was mourning the murders, looting and arson that shattered the fragile reconciliation process of the Albanian and Serbian communities when the Nato secretary general flew in this week to declare that such violence would not be tolerated again. But for Radojka and Ljiljana, two women driven with their families from their homes in the capital, Pristina, by a baying mob, all that meant nothing. Huddled in the sports hall of a school in Gracanica - one of the few remaining Serbian enclaves in the former Yugoslav province - they were angry, confused and full of foreboding. These were among 1,200 Serbian civilians "cleansed" from their homes in the towns and villages by Albanians and now herded into makeshift refugee centres.

Neither woman wanted to give her surname because they feared retribution. "It is the second time that I have had to run away like this, hiding, frightened for our lives,'' said Radojka, 41. "After the war in 1999 I fled with my husband and children from L¼ubljana to Pristina. We thought things were getting better, and we were safe there. Now this has happened. I don't know what is going to happen to us, but I cannot face a third time of this. We cannot go back to our homes, it is simply not safe there.'' Radojka, her 49-year-old husband, Mirko, and their three children were at home in the YU Apartments in the centre of Pristina, inhabited solely by Serbs, when a crowd of about 2,000 surrounded the building about 5pm on Wednesday. For the next eight hours they and their neighbours were besieged by groups of men hurling bricks and Molotov cocktails. The attackers broke down the doors and attacked many with knives and baseball bats. Dozens were injured, and at least one man, Dragan Smiliavic, a United Nations official, is critically ill with stab wounds. The Serbs were eventually rescued by a unit of Nato's Kosovo Force. Some are now at Slim Line, the military barracks in Pristina where the newly arrived British troops have also taken up residence. Others are at Gracanica, among 10,000 fellow Serbs. Ljiljana, 40, her 44-year-old husband, Zoran, and their five children were also part of the exodus. She, too, does not want to go home. "What is the point? They have stolen everything, TVs, telephones, furniture, even our clothes. A policeman has been to our flat, and he said there is nothing left. What they had not taken, they had smashed,'' said Ljiljana. "It is all very well for Nato to say now that they have sent more troops. But they were not there when we needed them. And they'll leave in a few weeks' time. If we go back to our homes, who will protect us then?'' A representative of the United Nations mission in Kosovo came in with photographs of the refugees' homes, many of them burnt after being ransacked. A frail woman of 82, sitting rocking on a camp bed, stared at the photograph in her hand and would not let go. "She has no family. They smashed down her door and got in. Will you send her back for another experience like that?'' a Serbian Red Cross official asked.