Serbian Orthodox Church - News 1.4.2004.

NEWS

Information Service of
the Serbian Orthodox Church
April 1, 2004

BISHOP ARTEMIJE OF RASKA-PRIZREN AT THE INSTITUTE OF RELIGION AND PUBLIC POLICY ROUNDABLE ON THE LATEST EVENTS IN KOSOVO

Ladies and gentlemen,

BISHOP ARTEMIJE Only a month ago I was here in Washington to warn U.S. officials and the public of the catastrophic situation in the areas of security and human rights for the Serb community in Kosovo and Metohija.

Some of those who heard me speak understood the seriousness of my words but I am afraid that my words were quickly overruled by the report of UNMIK chief Harri Holkeri in UN headquarters and other international reports, which described the situation in the Province in unrealistically rosy terms. These reports avoided defining the real problems, treating existing problems in lopsided and biased fashion. I regret that I must say that I was right because I would truly prefer reality to be as optimistic as seen by certain international officials. Unfortunately, the recent Albanian pogrom against the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, which occurred in the period from March 17 to March 19, has most loudly disclaimed all the illusions that representatives of the UN mission, as well as individual diplomatic representatives in Pristina, have attempted to present to the world as the irrefutable truth.

According to UNMIK numbers in just two days at least 20 people were killed, almost 900 civilians were wounded, 22 of them seriously, 561 Serb homes were burned down and 218 were damaged, among them the recently restored homes of Serb returnees paid for by the international community. Furthermore, as a bishop I am especially horrified by the fact that in those two days of disaster a total of 35 Orthodox Christian churches and monasteries were destroyed or heavily damaged, among them pearls of medieval architecture dating back to the 14th century. My Bishop's residence and my cathedral in Prizren have been torched. Two monasteries from the 14th century have been burned to the ground. While the U.S. cultural community admires the exhibition of medieval Byzantine art currently on display at New York's Metropolitan Museum, including works of Serbian art, in Kosovo and Metohija in the last few days hundreds of valuable icons and works of art have been destroyed, dozens of cemeteries have been desecrated, even the relics of saints and the bones of Serbian rulers have been dug up and scattered. The bestial violence and barbaric behavior toward the Christian cultural heritage is absolutely shocking. In the ash heaps of our churches, we are finding the remains of frescoes dating back to the 12th and 14th centuries, crucifixes and burned medieval manuscripts. Such barbarity, ladies and gentlemen, occurring not in a time of war but under a UN protectorate and in the presence of 18,000 of the best-trained soldiers of the NATO alliance and several thousand international policemen, is unprecedented in the modern history of the world.

May I remind you that violence against the Serbs under the UN protectorate and KFOR did not begin just a few days ago. It has been ongoing, with greater or lesser intensity, for the past almost five years during which 112 of our churches have been destroyed, almost 2,000 Serbs have been murdered or kidnapped, and one quarter of a million Serbs who were forced to flee from Kosovo after June 1999 before the Kosovo Liberation Army still remain in exile. We must not forget these victims of the so-called international peace. What occurred last week is just the logical continuation of what has been happening under the eyes of the world for years, as well as the direct result of the UN mission's lack of decisiveness in establishing security and safety for all civilians regardless of their ethnic origin or religious affiliation, and bringing the perpetrators of crime to justice.

I must immediately emphasize that last week's pogrom cannot be described as "an interethnic conflict between Serbs and Albanians" as some media chose to describe it, supposedly for lack of accurate information. Neither were these the misdeeds of a small group of extremists who previously destroyed our churches and murdered individuals, entire families and children. These were tens of thousands of Albanians who, led by former veterans of the Kosovo Liberation Army, laid waste to everything bearing the sign of the Cross, of civilization, in Kosovo and Metohija. These were not just demonstrators; according KFOR testimony they were armed with machine guns, hand grenades even grenade launchers. And the targets of their attacks were not just Serbs, their churches and homes but also KFOR soldiers and UNMIK policemen who attempted to protect the Serb enclaves. According to data from UNMIK, 117 UNMIK policemen and 63 KFOR soldiers were wounded, and over 150 UN and local police vehicles were burned or damaged. According to information that has not yet been publicly confirmed, there were casualties among the international forces, including the two policemen killed just the other night in an ethnically pure Albanian part of Kosovo.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are the true results of the mission, which only a month ago was being called a "success story". A month ago NATO generals were talking about the need to further reduce the military presence and discontinue security checkpoints, while UNMIK leaders were seriously proposing to complete the transfer of all competencies to Albanian provisional institutions. Serbian representatives, including those of the Serbian Orthodox Church, have been constantly warning that behind the facade of so-called democracy and apparent multiethnicity in provisional institutions hides a hideous picture of ethnic violence, discrimination, lawlessness and crime. We warned that the paramilitary organization of the former Kosovo Liberation Army had not been dismantled after the armed conflict and the deployment of NATO, that it had only been transformed into multiple satellite paramilitary and criminal organizations which continued actively arming themselves, planning and implementing the complete ethnic cleansing of the Province with the goal of creating a second Albanian state in the Balkans – a state where there will be room only for ethnic Albanians.

Is this a spontaneous or even a justified demonstration of violence?

I will cite the official spokesman of the UN police, Mr. Derek Chappell, who was among the first to state that the violence suggested that the attacks "could have been planned". I also received confirmation from Mr. Holkeri personally a few days ago; despite the fact that he, like many others, at first believed that this was a spontaneous demonstration of violence. On the morning of March 17, Albanian media unanimously took advantage of the tragic drowning death of three Albanian children to issue a war cry for the beginning of a general pogrom against the Serbs, despite the fact that the very next day UNMIK police confirmed that there were no indications that this was an ethnically motivated crime on the part of the Serbs.

Soon NATO's South-East Europe commander Admiral Gregory G. Johnson told media "the relentless wave of violence across Kosovo over the past two days now appears to be organized and orchestrated. What is more, Admiral Johnson told AFP on March 19 "to speak of inter-ethnic conflict in Kosovo is a big, hypocritical lie. What’s happening in Kosovo is called a pogrom against a people and its history." On March 20 Admiral Johnson told Albanian language media point blank "these kinds of activities represent ethnic cleansing and cannot go on. Fighting ethnic cleansing was the reason why we came here." These words by a leading NATO official based on detailed reports from the field completely disprove the numerous reports that appeared in numerous respected newspapers throughout the Western democratic world, apparently based solely on the false claims of Albanian media and without any objective verification. Nevertheless, the lie has been discovered and the truth about ethnic cleansing and the systematic destruction of Christian holy sites could not be hidden.

On the day the pogrom began, Hashim Thaci was in Washington talking about multiethnicity and the progress of democracy in the Province. Events on the ground disproved his claims even as the words were leaving his mouth. While Thaci spoke about democracy, thousands of Albanians belonging to his political party were laying waste to entire Serb villages and churches, leaving graffiti – including the acronyms of Thaci's party, the PDK, the terrorist AKSh, the Kosovo Protection Corps and other organizations under the KLA label. Buses of so-called war veterans armed to the teeth headed from Thaci's native Drenica region in the direction of Pristina and Mitrovica and clashed with international forces.

Seeing they could not cover up the extent of the violence and barbarity, the Albanian leaders adopted another strategy. They tried to explain to the world that the cause of the violence was the unresolved status of Kosovo and Metohija, unemployment and other social problems. Although I have no desire to reduce the significance of these problems, too, I would like to quote the words of NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, as reported by the Pristina Albanian language daily "Koha Ditore" on March 23 and by other international journalists: "I don’t believe that the unresolved status has anything to do with this. This has to do with people who think wrongly, who have illusions that by carrying out these criminal acts of ethnic violence they get closer to their ambitions but they must understand that the international community will never accept this."

Scheffer, as well as other officials who have pointed out that the justifications of the Albanian leaders are attempts to avoid responsibility or transfer it to the international community and Belgrade, are in fact pointing to the root of the problem of what is now happening in Kosovo and Metohija. I will use an analogy:

Imagine, ladies and gentlemen, that a jumbo jet has been hijacked and the hijackers are threatening that they will begin killing the passengers, the pilots or that they will crash the plane into a high-rise building if their demands are not met. Would your government cave in to such blackmail? Would the hijackers whose demands had been met stop hijacking airplanes or would they hijack more planes and make even more demands? Ladies and gentlemen, in Kosovo and Metohija there is a campaign of organized terrorism going on against which we must fight in the same way that your country is fighting against terrorism in other parts of the world. If the Albanian extremists are rewarded for using such methods, crudely manipulating their own people and threatening regional peace in order to create an independent state that would institutionalize the rule of organized crime and mafia bosses, the situation will be seriously destabilized not only in the Balkans but in all of Europe and international global interests will be threatened.

How to resolve this situation, ladies and gentlemen?

Let us use the experience of the medical specialist who does not prescribe over-the-counter pain relievers and vitamins to a seriously ill patient but sends him for detailed testing and then, if necessary, applies methods of radical surgery to remove the identified source of infection. So far “specialists” have not treated Kosovo but by "general practitioners" who have been treating the inflamed and cancerous wound of the patient with aspirins and band-aids, hoping the patient would cure him and thus simplify the procedure. The results of the wrong therapy can be clearly seen today.

In political terms, Kosovo needs radical surgery and shock therapy, consisting of the following measures:

1. Strong KFOR presence with broad authority, which would discourage further demonstrations of violence and completion of ethnic cleansing.
2. Urgent intelligent operations to identify the organizers, planners, helpers and direct perpetrators of criminal actions. Those responsible to be brought to justice, extremist organizations to be banned and their paramilitary activities prevented.
3. Urgent restoration of destroyed Serb villages, the return of displaced persons, the restoration of destroyed and damaged churches in cooperation with the Serbian Orthodox Church and appropriate Serbian and international expert teams.
4. Detailed investigation of the work of the media and sanctioning of the use of media to promote ethnic hatred, encourage violence and spread propaganda. At this exact moment, an Albanian radio program is broadcasting inflammatory nationalistic songs celebrating Adem Jashari and the KLA. The Serbs are called the worst possible names, generating enormous ethnic hatred.
5. General practitioners and voodoo doctors of the past need to be replaced by competent specialists with broad powers and operational experience. A system of accountability needs to be established and all representatives of the UN mission, police and KFOR who in any way contributed to the escalation of violence either through their actions or lack of same must submit their resignations.
6. Urgent definition of concrete institutional and security systems to protect the Serb people and other non-Albanians from further annihilation. The integration of Serbs into a society where they are exposed to physical, spiritual and cultural destruction is an absurd request.
7. Temporary dissolution of Kosovo institutions, which by their silence, propaganda or complete lack of activity have shown themselves to be immature or incompetent for further participation in the political process.
8. Following radical therapy, a political convalescence process needs to be launched with those political representatives who are firmly committed to the principles and values of a democratic society. Serbs can only participate as equals and give their contribution to the democratization of Kosovo society only in such a process and with such institutions.
9. Finally, redefining the standards program and launching the process of economic and political building of a stable democratic society in Kosovo and Metohija with the creation of all preconditions for a consensual resolution of the final status of the Province where all peoples would enjoy all individual and collective human rights, regardless of final status.
10. Our opinion remains that the best way to resolve the Kosovo problem in the long run is to implement the through process of decentralization which would enable Serbs in the areas in which they constitute relative majority a possibility to have more self rule and protect their human, cultural and religious rights in a better way. Special protection has to be granted to Orthodox Christian monasteries, particularly our major monasteries of the Pec Patriarchate, Decani and Gracanica. In this proposal Kosovo would not become an independent state and the international borders of Serbia-Montenegro would not be changed. However, Kosovo would enjoy the highest level of autonomy within the country, which at the moment remains the most multiethnic state of the Balkans.

Otherwise, ladies and gentlemen, ideas suggesting that the politics of accomplished fact should be accepted with the goal of proclaiming the full or so-called conditional independence of Kosovo or Metohija or the partition of the province along ethnic lines with so-called "humane relocation of the population" would represent a dangerous precedent that would destabilize the situation throughout the region, embolden radical forces in Serbia and Macedonia, incite interethnic and inter-religious clashes involving the destruction of religious sites and prevent the European integration of this physical part of Europe for decades. The recognition of the independence of Kosovo especially would set a precedent for the use of violence to impose institutional solutions without recourse to negotiations and international law, which could have unforeseeable consequences.

I would like to assure you that most of the Albanian population in Kosovo has been thoroughly manipulated by their political leaders, largely leaders of the former KLA, as well as by the Albanian language media with few exceptions. They are channeling the completely understandable discontent of young people who have been promised a sort of Eldorado against the other ethnic communities and international missions and thus hoping to force international forces to abandon Kosovo and Metohija and leave them in full power.

In conclusion, as a bishop of the Church I appeal to the U.S. community, which has always stood on the side of the protection of basic religious and human rights throughout the world, not to allow unprecedented ethnic violence to unfold under the flags of the most respected democratic countries of the world, first and foremost, the United States of America; the destruction of centuries-old cultural and historical heritage, valuable Christian monuments and an entire people which has been present here for centuries and represents an integral part of the global cultural legacy which our generation needs to preserve for the future.

Thank you.