Serbian graveyards in Kosovo and Metohija: destroyed and desecrated

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There Must To Be Justice  Original articlle

ISTOK, PEĆ — Serbian government’s Kraljevo-based Office for Kosovo on Sunday organized a visit to cemeteries in towns of Istok and Peć for displaced Serbs.

Both cemeteries have been desecrated.

In the town of Istok, where only several Serb families still live, more than 100 tombstones have been damaged and completely destroyed.

“A decade of madness cannot defeat centuries,” said Kraljevo-based Office for Kosovo Director Aleksandar Erac.

“In Istok, mad people had no respect for anyone, everyone’s tombstones were destroyed, regardless of the dead people’s age,” he added.

The displaced Serbs lit candles and laid flowers to the graves of their loved ones.

The cemetery in Peć, one of the largest Orthodox cemeteries in Kosovo, has been turned into a landfill where Albanians throw their garbage, the office stressed.

“Cow heads scattered around once paved paths warn of misdoings of those whose alleged independence is recognized by more than 90 countries,” Erac noted.

Vandals destroyed not only tombstones but also marble slabs and coffins and many bodies of the deceased are missing.

According to the Kosovo police, 50 Serbian graves were desecrated at the Orthodox cemetery in Prizren during the last month,  the Diocese said citing a local priest.

The Diocese said that the desecration occurred just a week after vandals desecrated about 50 graves at the Orthodox cemetery in Kosovo Polje.

At the invitation via Facebook by the extremist Albanian organization self-styled ‘Albanian National Army’, members of the ultra-nationalist organization ‘Self-Determination’ gathered and tried to attack the Monastery of the Most Holy Mother of God in Djakovica last night.

The attack on the Orthodox facility, home to four Serb women who remained there, namely nuns Teoktista and Joanikija and two old women, Vasiljka and Nada, was prevented from taking place by Kosovo police and KFOR.

The building, now renewed, was razed to the ground by the Albanian terrorists in the 2004 pogrom.

At the moment when the European Council discusses human rights in Kosovo-Metohija, the world can once more see for itself where the society in which family tombs are desecrated and Christian shrines and symbols are attacked is heading, said the Diocese.

The Diocese added that the motive for the attacks could not be explained for by the recent tension in the southern Serbian town of Presevo, because the desecrations of Serbian holy sites and cemeteries have been ongoing for years.

Bishop Teodosije demanded a better protection of Orthodox religious sites and cemeteries and urged the international community not to allow the rampage of nationalists who inflict pain and damage to the remaining Serbs in Kosovo and bring great shame on the Albanian people.

A monument in Kosovska Vitina dedicated to those who fought against the German occupation forces in World War Two was torn down on Monday, the local radio station Klokot has reported.

Kosovo police spokesperson Saban Azizi has confirmed this, the radio stated.

Dozens of Serb graves across Kosovo were desecrated on Sunday night, in Klokot, Priluzje, Plemetina and Prizren, while unidentified individuals in Gorazdevac desecrated the monument to the victims of the NATO bombing campaign and to the Serb children killed at the river Bistrica in 2003.

Erac stressed that the perpetrators wanted to erase century-long existence of the Serbian people in Kosovo by desecrating the cemeteries.