Jovan Vraniskovski was summoned at a local detention facility Tuesday, July 19, to start serving an 18-months prison sentence for refusing to accept the authority of the government-backed Macedonian Orthodox Church, news reports said.
The 39-year old Vraniskovski, who was previously sentenced to five days solitary confinement for baptizing his sister’s grandchild, had till midnight to check in at the prison of his home town Bitola, reported Makfax, a Macedonian independent news agency.
He received the summon for serving prison time at a police station in Bitola, after he was detained at the border crossing Medzitlija on his way back from Greece, Makfax said. It came as a setback for the dissident bishop, his co-workers explained.
"[Bishop] Jovan expected postponement of the sentence by August 2 [because] the Head of [the] Serbian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Pavle, is due to hand over personally the thomos marking the autonomous Ohrid Orthodox Archbishopric," Makfax quoted one of the monks of Vraniskovski’s church as saying.
"INTOLERANCE" CHARGED
Last month the Bitola appeal court confirmed the 18 month prison sentence handed down by a lower court, after prosecutors argued that Vraniskovski’s activities and refusal to recognize the Macedonian Orthodox Church amounted to "inciting national, racial and religious hatred, schism and intolerance."
Vraniskovski said earlier that he would duly register in Bitola’s prison, but he now wants to file an appeal to the Supreme Court and a request for postponement of sentence serving, Makfax reported. He reportedly added that if the Supreme Court rule out his appeal, he would proceed to the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg.
However it appeared unlikely Tuesday, July 19, that he would be allowed to sleep at home. His expected arrival at the prison came after the bishop and other believers supporting him said they lived in fear following an incident in March last year when two masked men armed with semiautomatic rifles, allegedly forced their way into their church building in search of the bishop.
Failing to find him, they reportedly verbally abused two nuns in the house, cut off the women’s hair and set the building alight. Neither nun was seriously hurt, but the house was reportedly badly damaged.
GOVERNMENT CAMPAIGN
Vraniskovski, whose title is Bishop Jovan, Metropolitan of Veles and Povodarije, believes the attack and the prison sentence is part of a campaign by some church leaders and government officials to persecute him and his group for their refusal to recognize the state-backed Macedonian Orthodox Church.
"It is ridiculous that they are trying to silence me, in this age of the internet and mass communication," he told the news agency of human rights group Forum 18 recently. However "when they hit the shepherd, they expect the sheep to run away, but church history is paradoxical, as, the more the church is persecuted, the more followers it gets," Vraniskovski was quoted as saying.
He has said that to "imprison an archbishop of a church in the 21st century – merely for serving his people" raises serious questions about the system and the state. The Macedonian government has so far refused to intervene, but human rights activists believe the move could undermine the ethnically tense Balkan country’s efforts to join Western organizations such as the European Union, which demands religious freedom. (With Stefan J. Bos, BosNewsLife Research and reports from Macedonia).
