IN FOCUS: THE SERBIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH IN KOSOVA.
The stoning by Kosovars of a bus full of Russian humanitarians with
an armed escort has laid bare ongoing ethnic conflict in the region,
the frustrations of international peacekeepers, and the mounting
concern many Russians have for their fellow Slavs and co-religionists
in the Serbian community in Kosova. A crowd of Kosovar Albanians
threw stones at a bus escorted by KFOR troops carrying a delegation
from the Russian Andrei Pervozvanny Fund and the Russian-Serbian
Society on 7 January, ITAR-TASS and other Russian news services
reported. Windows were broken but there were no injuries. The
incident happened after the Orthodox Christmas service, celebrated
under the old church calendar, at the Visoki Decanci Monastery.
Hari Holkeri, interim UN administration chief, accompanied by
KFOR and UN police units, had attended the service. He immediately
condemned the attack, Belgrade's BETA news agency reported. The
stone-throwers were described variously as numbering "300" by
ITAR-TASS, as a "small group" by BETA, and as "three people" by
UNMIK. Russia's RTR channel showed a throng of Kosovars jeering
and gesturing rudely at the departing bus with shattered windows.
Members of the Serbian National Assembly condemned the
attack. "It proves Kosovar Albanians' attitude toward the
Orthodox world," ITAR-TASS quoted them as saying.
The Andrei Pervozvanny Fund is named after the apostle, St.
Andrew, believed to be the "first-called" apostle in the Orthodox
faith. Legend has it that the apostle visited Kyiv in the first
century, declaring it to be the site of a magnificent city. The fund,
founded in 1992, has made a name for itself seeking out certain
conflict zones abroad, such as Kosova and Iraq, and making
contributions of humanitarian goods. Journalists from the state RTR
and RIA-Novosti agencies, were among the journalists who traveled
with the group to Kosova. The fund is a conservative organization
that conducts domestic education programs as well as missionary work
abroad. The group's website (
http://www.fap.ru) describes its
goal as, "the formation in society of positive relations with the
traditional pillars upholding Russia: state, church, and army." In
the past, the organization has awarded its St. Andrew Prize for Faith
and Loyalty to Moscow Mayor Yurii Luzhkov and Belarusian President
Alyaksandr Lukashenka for his efforts "in uniting the Slavic
peoples." Another group on the mission to Kosova was the
Serbian-Russian Friendship Society. In the Soviet past, "friendship"
societies were controlled by the state; today, they are nominally
independent but still help to carry out the government's foreign
policy goals.
Featured at the top of the news hour on Russian television
this week, the story of the bus stoning was emblematic of Russian
concerns that Serbs are now living as second-class citizens in a
guarded ghetto in Kosova, ignored by the international community.
Some 150 Serbs live under virtual house arrest in an apartment
complex in Decani protected by KFOR, Russian journalists said. Once a
week, soldiers take families to do their shopping at the market, and
the housing complex maintains its own clinic to avoid hospital
visits. Because of frequent violent attacks, children are told to
stay indoors, but parents have a hard time keeping them inside. Most
of the working-class people do not have the means to move from the
region and start new lives. The government in Belgrade wishes to
defend its own interests in Kosova, and wants the international
community to ensure the protection of the Serbs who have become a
minority there, the report said.
Before the onset of war in 1999, there were 40,000 Serbs in
Kosova, Serbian community leaders in Prishtina told Russian
reporters. Professor Lubish Folich of Prishtina University said he
left Prishtina after finding his apartment occupied by ethnic
Albanians, who offered to buy it at half price. Russian peacekeepers,
who number about 100 in Kosova, say that in housing disputes, local
courts favor those in possession of documents. The few Serbs who risk
returning to their homes after they managed to get a court order to
evict ethnic Albanians are "sometimes killed," RIA Novosti reported
on 7 January.
Although slightly decreased from the previous year, 2003 saw
42 shootings and grenade/bomb attacks in Kosova, according to a
August 2003 report from KFOR, which maintains 22,000 troops in
Kosova. One of the grimmest incidents has left the community
traumatized, despairing of ever being able to enjoy security and
justice in Kosova. On 13 August 2003, an unknown person opened fire
with an automatic weapon on a group of six Kosovar Serb teenagers
swimming in the Bistrica River between Zahac and Gorazdevac. A
19-year-old died instantly, and a 12-year-old boy died on the way to
hospital. A third teenager suffered a severe head wound. While the
motives were not known, Serbs and Russians blame Kosovar Albanians.
On 13 January, Russian TV's "Vesti" aired a Christmas Eve
interview with the father of one of the slain boys in a snowy
churchyard, with bells ringing. It is one of many unsolved hate
crimes that Russian groups have cited in a human rights report on
ethnic minorities in Kosova that they have sent to the United Nations
and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
As in Russia, the Serbian Orthodox Church is consolidating
itself in society after years of persecution in the communist era. In
November 2003, Serbian government officials, led by Prime Minister
Zoran Zivkovic, met with Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle and members
of the Serbian Orthodox Church's Holy Synod to discuss the
current situation in the country and relations between the state and
the church, official news agencies reported. "Meetings of this kind
can strengthen the grounds of a new tradition and bolster ties
between the state and the church in these trying times for both the
Serbian state and its people," said Zivkovic in a press statement.
The outgoing Serbian cabinet overturned a 1952 decree that
abolished Belgrade University's theological faculty when the
country was under communist rule. The faculty has now been restored,
"righting a historical injustice," FoNet reported on 9 January. The
reassertion of the church has angered some. The Macedonian Orthodox
Church, for example, has complained that the Serbian Orthodox Church
will not recognize Macedonia's independence and has interfered in
its affairs.
In a Christmas message, Bishop Artemi of Rsko-Prizren, who
heads the Kosova diocese, said the Serbian Orthodox Church will
continue to side with parishes in Kosova. "If the Serbian Church left
Kosova, not a single Serb, not a single monastery or cathedral would
remain," Bishop Artemi was quoted as saying by RIA-Novosti on 7
January. Attacks against clergy and church property in Kosova have
fueled ethnic hatred in the region for decades, and Serbs often cite
the atrocities committed against the church as evidence that the
Kosovars cannot be granted independence. The bishop travels in an
armored vehicle; humanitarians and now journalists, too, are advised
to have an armed escort.
The United Nations Mission in Kosova (UNMIK) has frequently
had to intervene with troops and make public condemnations of
ethnically motivated attacks against the Serbs. Nevertheless, on 31
December 2003, UNMIK transferred a final set of responsibilities to
local provisional institutions as part of a commitment to gradually
introduce self-government to Kosova, the UN news agency IRIN reported
on 31 December 2003. The goal has been to try to establish greater
autonomy for the region. Some functions, including the supervision of
an independent media commission, will not be operational until
enabling legislation is passed. UNMIK will retain power over
security, foreign relations, minority rights protection, and energy.
In making the transition, the UN Security Council passed a
resolution concerning "standards for Kosova" regarding a range of
issues including human rights, until the enclave's final status
can be determined. The standards include: functioning democratic
institutions, rule of law, freedom of movement, returns and
reintegration, economy, property rights, dialogue with Belgrade, and
the operation of the Kosova Protection Corps -- all issues that
directly affect the Serbian and other minorities remaining in Kosova.
A representative of the UN secretary-general is to work out a
monitoring and implementation mechanism for the standards, and a
comprehensive review is expected in mid-2005. At that time, the issue
of Kosova's status may also be reviewed, although Serbian leaders
say with a lack of protection for the Serbian minority and little
improvement in the last four years, they cannot support independence.
At a press conference to release the standards, reported by
AFP on 10 December 2003, Holkeri said, "In a sense this document
represents a choice.... Achieve the standards and the international
community will in due course make the necessary decisions to consider
Kosova's final status. Fail them, and Kosova will remain stuck,
backward, left behind perhaps for decades to come."
No perpetrators of attacks on religious sites have ever been
found, and KFOR says it has "no knowledge of the alleged events,"
Forum 18 reports. An Orthodox priest told F18 that, while grateful to
KFOR for the protection they have afforded, they are critical about
the lack of results on investigating such crimes and the slow
responses. They noted that troops took 10 hours to assemble a
military vehicle escort to travel to a village to comfort the
families of the teenagers shot and wounded. Two weeks before
Christmas, a hand grenade was thrown into the yard of St. Uros
Church, damaging a vehicle; churches are frequently vandalized and
property stolen.
These persistent attacks on Serbs in Kosova and the failure
to improve the situation there, as well as demands of the
international community to extradite war criminals, have moved
Serbian voters to back radicals in recent elections, former Yugoslav
President Vojislav Kostunica said in an interview last week with a
Zagreb weekly, as reported by AFP. In December 2003 parliamentary
elections, the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party won with 27
percent of the vote. Kostunica's reformist Democratic Party of
Serbia came in second, with nearly 18 percent. Analysts have
disagreed whether the radicalization of the electorate signifies the
persistence of ethnic hatred and the search for facile solutions, or
dissatisfaction with the government's failure to deliver economic
improvements.
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