persecution, despite reconciliation efforts by the local government, BosNewsLife learned Saturday, June 1.
Reports about violence against Orthodox nuns, monks, laypeople and Serbian graves come less than a month after Kosovo’s recently elected prime minister Bajram Rexhepi attended an Orthodox Easter Service at a monastery in the town of Pec, May 5.
Rexhepi came to the monastery with the head of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), Michael Steiner and officials of the NATO-led peacekeeping forces KFOR, who have not been able to completely protect Serbs in mainly ethnic Albanian Kosovo.
"DEPLORABLE"
"Any attacks on any religious groups are deplorable," a spokesman for UNMIK told KNS, which monitors religious persecution. Speaking from Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, he said that the situation "has got better recently", but admitted that attacks against Orthodox believers "have not completely stopped."
He referred to the Orthodox diocese of Raska and Prizren which have reported more attacks at monasteries and graveyards over the Orthodox Easter season, said KNS.
The diocese said its monastery was attacked early May by angry ethnic Albanian youth who "sprayed the monastery yard with stones, also hitting the ancient churches." To prevent more attacks Italian KFOR soldiers decided to build an additional wall to the existing one with sandbags and barbed wire, the diocese told KNS.
NUNS
”The nuns in this monastery are the only remaining Serbs living in the town," the diocese added. Meanwhile in the early hours of May 5, unknown persons reportedly toppled all the tombstones at the Piskote Orthodox cemetery near the city of Djakovica.
"Marble tablets were stolen from several graves, probably to be resold, and crosses and inscriptions were broken," the diocese told KNS. "Part of the roof from the local chapel of St. Lazar’s has been taken as well. This attack occurred only after the Italian troops recently decided to withdraw their troops from the chapel entrance yard."
Similar incidents as well as attacks against nuns and their properties were also reported elsewhere in May in the troubled province. Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica has expressed concern about "a continuance of destruction of rich religious and cultural inheritance which is of enormous value to the world cultural and religious heritage."
REFUGEES
Kostunica is worried that these incidents will discourage the return of an estimated 240,000 Serb refugees from Kosovo, who now stay in Yugoslavia’s main republic Serbia and Montenegro.
Most of them left shortly after 78 days of NATO bombardments against Yugoslavia three years ago, which was triggered by a violent Serb crack-down when at least about 1,000 Kosovo Albanians were killed and 800,000 others were forced to flee.
Human rights groups say many innocent Serbs became victims of ethnic Albanians seeking revenge for years of suffering under Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, a Serb politician who was meanwhile transferred to the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal.
