Serbian Orthodox Church

Information Service of
the Serbian Orthodox Church
Avgust 17, 2005

OMINOUS GRAFFITI APPEARS ON CHURCH WALL IN IMOTSKI

On Saturday, August 13, 2005 graffiti appeared on the wall of the Orthodox church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos in Imotski saying, “Ante, we all support you”1 and “O Glavina, you are full of Serbs; don’t worry, Glavina, there are more willow trees.”2, 3

Father Djordje Knezevic, the priest in Imotski, reported the appearance of these ominous messages to the Split-Dalmatia district police administration. The parish priest and Orthodox faithful are concerned because of the reappearance of graffiti of this content.

Source: Diocese of Dalmatia

1. Likely a reference to Croatian fugitive general Ante GOTOVINA, indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in for crimes troops under his command committed against Krajina Serbs during and after Operation Storm; and/or Ante PAVELIC, the leader and founding member of the Croatian Ustasha fascist movement in the 1930s and later the leader of the Independent State of Croatia. As the leader of the Ustasha, Pavelic conducted a campaign of genocidal terror against Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and communist Croats, killing about one million people, overwhelmingly Serbs. The campaign against the Serbs aimed “to exterminate a third of them, expel another third, and Catholicize another”.
2. Glavina Donja, a village near Imotski. The Diocese of Dalmatia reported that the Orthodox church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos there was dynamited and destroyed on 29 October 1991. “Its iconostasis, of priceless value, has been destroyed. The entrance door has been blown to pieces. The stone floor-tiles have been torn from their places, windows blown out, walls cracked, the roof jarred out of place.” In 1992 the church was leveled with the ground.
3. Reference to the notorious Ustashe slogan, “Hang the Serbs from the willow trees.”

[Serbian Translation Services]