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In
ethnically-divided Kosovo (Kosova in Albanian),
religious freedom has suffered because of the conflict. With 90 percent of
the population made up of ethnic Albanians, most of whom are
Muslim with a Catholic minority and a small number of Protestants and
adherents of other faiths, ethnic Serbs are an embattled minority. Mostly
Orthodox, their monuments consist largely of churches, monasteries and
graveyards, all of which have been subjected to a sustained and organised
campaign of attack. But the ethnic polarisation
has left other religious minorities vulnerable.
Most members of non-Albanian Muslim minorities in Kosovo (Roma, Ashkali, Turks, Bosniaks and Gorancis)
were forced to flee to Serbia
during and after the 1999 war, but Islamic leaders in Belgrade have complained of the treatment
of the estimated 2,000 that remain. Likewise, Croat Catholics also fled.
Serbian Protestant pastor Simo Ralevic – who was himself expelled from Pec (Peja) with other church
members in 1999 - told Forum 18 that almost no Serbian Protestants now
remain in Kosovo. Jehovah's Witness leaders report that all their ethnic
Serb members fled the province in 1998 and 1999, but three ethnic Albanian
congregations remain. Adventist leaders told Forum 18 that they have three
churches (Pristina, Djakovica/Gjakova and Pec), with about 200 church members. Jewish leaders
told Forum 18 that half the 100 or so Jews fled Kosovo during the war, but
30 of the 50 that remain have a community in Prizren.
Hare Krishna representatives told Forum 18 they have no organised
community, only a few individual adherents.
Despite Kosovo's status as a de facto international protectorate since NATO
troops arrived in 1999 as Slobodan Milosevic's forces pulled out, religious
freedom has been little protected. The competing mandates of the
international bodies that govern Kosovo – the United Nations mission UNMIK,
the OSCE mission and KFOR – together with the competing authority of the
locally-elected government in Pristina and the Belgrade authorities that still
insist that they have authority means that religious freedom concerns often
fall between the different institutions.
Sunil Narula, a spokesman for UNMIK, failed to
respond to Forum 18's enquiries as to what steps the mission was taking to
promote religious freedom in general and to end the attacks on Serbian
Orthodox sites.
Despite its mandate, which specifies that promotion of human rights is one
of its duties, the OSCE Mission has done little to promote religious
freedom, saying it has been forced to concentrate on other issues.
"The OSCE Mission in Kosovo deals with many issues of human rights but
freedom of religion is not one of them," Sven Lindholm,
acting spokesperson at the OSCE Mission, told Forum 18 from Pristina on 20
August. "I cannot disagree with you that freedom of religion is an
important right, yet there are a compendium of human rights issues which
are faced in Kosovo that need direct and continual attention. The OSCE's
primary focus is on minorities, smaller communities, ensuring that
international human rights standards are not only part of legislation but
also implemented."
KFOR's duties in the area of religious freedom
consist mainly of responsibility for protecting Serbian religious sites.
"By using a combination of fixed posts and mobile patrols, we continue
to protect not only historic and religious patrimonial sites (irrespective
of their particular religious or ethnic connections) but also the
population and infrastructure of Kosovo in general," KFOR spokesman
Wing-Commander Chris Thompson told Forum 18 on 28 August.
Life for the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo is difficult, mostly because
the members of this church are Serbs who do not have freedom of movement
and have to live in KFOR and UNMIK protected enclaves. Since the NATO
intervention, 56 historic churches, monasteries and sacral monuments – some
of them dating back to the 14th and 15th centuries - have been burnt,
looted, desecrated and destroyed, as well as 52 of more recent date.
In the last year, the most noticeable religious freedom violation facing
Serbian Orthodox believers has been the desecration, looting and
destruction of graveyards, although desecration of churches continues. In
February and March, UNMIK police reported that unknown persons broke into the
Orthodox chapel in the village
of Zupce
(built in 1938), broke the icons and desecrated the building.
In May Serbs visited their graveyard in Pec for
the first time in four years, to discover that it had been converted into
the city rubbish dump, half the tombstones had been knocked down, most of
the marble gravestones were missing, and some of the graves had even been
opened and dug in. After three days of cleaning and repairs, the Serbian
group left the site, only to find out the next day that more tombstones
were destroyed.
The Belgrade
daily Danas reported on 11 May that "the graveyard in Zahac was cleaned by a bulldozer, and that in the
villages of Babic, Glavcica,
Svrke, Naklo, Brestovik, Ljevosa, Siga, Decani, at the Orthodox
graveyards, there is not a single tombstone left undestroyed. Everything is
also destroyed in Klina, Petric
and Drsnik, churches included."
Orthodox sources in Orahovac (Rrahovec)
reported on 14 May that local Albanians were driving tractors through a
Serbian cemetery in the municipality, and that at the graveyard in Kosovska Vitina (Viti) a wooden cross that marked a grave was set on
fire the day after a burial ceremony.
The Orthodox church in Pristina has been repeatedly attacked since May (see
F18News 15 May 2003). The last attack came on 30 July, when several people
again threw stones at the church and parish house.
On 28 May unknown attackers fired at Spanish KFOR sentries guarding the
Orthodox convent of Gorioc, near Istok, while on 31 May a hand grenade was thrown at the
Greek KFOR checkpoint protecting the St Czar Uros
Church in the town of Urosevac (Ferizaj)
in southern Kosovo. Five people were injured.
Fr Dragan Kojic from Kosovska Vitina reported on
29 June that fifteen more tombstones had been destroyed in the village's
Orthodox graveyard. One of the latest incidents was the burning at the
graveyard in Bresje, near Kosovo Polje (Fushe Kosove) where, according to reports, a number of graves
were desecrated in mid-August.
Among recent incidents, on 21 August the Serbian cemetery in the village of Ponjesh,
near Gnjilane (Gjilan),
was set on fire, destroying tombstones and the Orthodox chapel.
In the evening of 27 August unknown persons, for the third time in four
months, damaged the fence and gate in front of the Orthodox church of St. Demeterius, in the ethnically mixed village of Susica, just east of Gracanica.
Gunfire was reported on 28 August close to Sokolica
Monastery during the Orthodox feast of the Dormition
of the Mother of God. Pilgrims from Mitrovica and
Zvecan were alarmed by this "provocation
which was intended to spread fear among the Serb congregation", the
Church complained.
David Perovic, professor at the Orthodox faculty
in Belgrade
who compiled a report on Kosovo for Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle, declared that "destruction of the graves
goes according to an established routine". He says this includes
selling marble gravestones to local Muslim families for them to be reused
as gravestones.
Many in the Albanian community refuse to see anything wrong with attacking
Orthodox sites, pointing out that hundreds of mosques were destroyed by
Serbian military and paramilitary forces during the 1999 war. An
illustrated book published by the Islamic community shows 215 damaged or
destroyed mosques, some of them up to 400 years old.
Xhabir Hamiti, a
lecturer at the Faculty for Islamic Studies in Pristina and assistant to
Kosovo's Chief Mufti, regards the number of damaged or destroyed Orthodox
sites as "very symbolic" in comparison, and even claims that
"no old Serbian monasteries were damaged during or after the War, even
though some of them were under the control of the Kosova
Liberation Army". His views were echoed by an assistant to Catholic
bishop Marko Sopi of Prizren.
"It's a reality that Orthodox churches have been attacked and
destroyed," the assistant told Forum 18. "But also mosques were
destroyed. Fewer Orthodox churches have been destroyed than mosques."
He said the Catholic Church has "always" condemned all such
attacks.
Albanians also regard many of the Orthodox churches built in the 1990s as
"provocative" and assertions of Serbian ownership of the
province. "When Milosevic came to power he had total control in Kosovo
and during his government the Serbian
Church built many
churches in different regions in Kosovo," Hamiti
told Forum 18. "Albanians call them political churches, because most
were built in places where there were no Orthodox believers, like the
church in the centre of the University
of Pristina, which
still exists in a very sensitive place."
Many Albanians also regard such attacks as justified reaction to the
Serbian government's earlier attacks on the Albanian population. "The
attacks on Serbian Orthodox churches and graveyards were based not on
religious issues or on religious hatred," Hamiti
insists, "but as revenge for crimes done by Serbs against Albanians in
Kosovo, the mass graves, the burned houses, the 70 percent of burned
villages and cities everywhere in Kosovo."
Although Thompson says KFOR remains "totally dedicated" to its
commitments to defend religious sites, he declined to say how many people
had been arrested and prosecuted for attacking Serbian Orthodox sites since
1999 (the Orthodox maintain that the number is zero), saying only that KFOR
works "tirelessly with our colleagues in the UNMIK Police and Kosovo
Police Service to support the early detection and successful prosecution of
all criminal acts wherever and whenever they occur".
UNMIK officials likewise were unable to tell Forum 18 how many prosecutions
there had been for attacks on Orthodox sites since 1999. "I don't
recall any prosecutions for this crime, very unfortunately," UNMIK
spokesperson Andrea Angeli told Forum 18 on 27
August. Angeli's colleague Niraj
Singh reported that there had been many acts of arson, graffiti and
throwing stones against Orthodox sites in the last few years, but said
UNMIK did not keep statistics of crimes categorised
by the nature of the target.
Thompson declined to say whether KFOR believed the security of Serbian
sites was improving or worsening, or to elaborate on the process of handing
over security responsibilities to the locally-recruited Kosovo Police
Service (KPS), a body the Serbs regard with great suspicion.
Forum 18 has found no evidence either that security is improving or that
KFOR, UNMIK or the KPS are taking any steps to halt the attacks on
religious sites and track down and arrest the
perpetrators. Nor has it found evidence that anyone has been prosecuted
either for attacks on Serbian Orthodox sites since 1999 (just as no-one is
known to have been prosecuted for the attacks on mosques during the war).
Security concerns restrict the Orthodox in other activities.
"Theoretically, there is no problem building new churches, but in
practice this is not possible anywhere outside the Serbian enclaves,"
Fr Sava (Janjic),
deputy abbot of the Decani Monastery, told Forum
18. "It is not possible to rebuild or restore even one of the 112
damaged or destroyed churches in zones outside the enclaves, because these
churches would be attacked again and destroyed."
The Decani monastery was directly responsible for
saving the lives of many ethnic Albanians during the 1999 war, but this
does not appear to have made a difference to the monastery's security
situation.
Fr Sava said that in summer 2002 the local
Orthodox bishop, Artemije (Radosavljevic),
asked for permission to restore the 14th century Zociste
Monastery near Orahovac. "But we did not get
permission from the German KFOR, because there is a lack of adequate
security and also because of protests from the Albanian Muslim population
living nearby." Only one fourteenth century monastery is being
restored at Banjska near Zvecan,
within a Serbian enclave and with finance from the Serbian government.
Fr Sava added that there is no freedom of
movement for Orthodox priests. "They cannot move freely outside the
enclaves and visit churches. These visitations are possible only if
organised in advance and with the assistance of KFOR or UNMIK police."
Nor is it safe for Orthodox believers to visit graveyards, except on
organised visitations. "For instance, in Prizren,
our priest is not allowed to visit his 68 parishioners in their homes. The
only way for them is all to come to the well-protected church
building."
Fr Sava declared that according to the law there
is no favoured religion in Kosovo. "But in
practice and in daily life, the Serbs and the Serbian Orthodox Church are
at the margin of society and the leading Kosovo institutions take no care
of this community." Symptomatic of this, Fr Sava
complained that the Orthodox Church has no access to Kosovo radio and TV,
and has no media of its own.
However, in Serbian enclaves religious education is organised in
coordination with the Orthodox Church and the Serbian Ministry of
Education, and follows the syllabus in Serbia.
In the 22 Evangelical churches in Kosovo almost all members are ethnic
Albanians and Western missionaries. A July document "Religious Freedom
Report for the Protestant Evangelicals in Kosovo", sent to Forum 18 by
local Protestants, notes that many Kosovar
Albanian Protestants are afraid to declare themselves Protestant Christians
for fear of persecution from local Albanians. Dubbed "secret
believers", they attend church services without the knowledge of their
families and communities.
Other Protestants in Kosovo confirmed to Forum 18 that church members from
Muslim backgrounds face intermittent "persecution", including
from family members.
Evangelical leaders met Kosovar government
officials a number of times and even discussed their concerns with the
prime minister, Bajram Rexhepi.
Two Evangelical churches, in Djakovica and Mitrovica, were granted licences
for church buildings and more new buildings are planned.
However, the report says foreign Protestant missionaries are treated well
and are respected by the general population. "They do not fear for
themselves and for their own safety, but are troubled that the national
believers live in fear with the constant threat of persecution... Sometimes
the entire family is threatened with ostracism even though only one member
is a Protestant believer. This always leads to intensified family pressure
and, on occasion, to actual beatings suffered by the believer."
The Protestants attribute such pressure to Muslim extremists. "The
radical Muslim fractions causing this suffering attend local mosques and
are hidden and protected by these mosques, whose official line is that they
have nothing to do with extremist groups," the report alleges. "The
general consensus amongst missionaries and national church leaders is that
a more aggressive Islamic movement is increasing."
On 11 May a member of the Evangelical
Church in Gnjilane - previously a Muslim - was severely beaten
after receiving several earlier threats. In anonymous phone calls he was
accused of being a "cross-follower" and a "traitor".
Hamiti for one dismisses such reports of
difficulties for ethnic Albanian Protestants. "Personally I do not
have any information that they experience fear from radical
Islamists," he told Forum 18. "Some of the pastors are my friends
and they have never mentioned that to me."
Protestant church buildings have several times been targeted and broken
into, with equipment stolen. "Frequently, although these incidents
were reported to the authorities, police does not investigate them
adequately and does not pursue the perpetrators." The report complains
that for example, those who attacked a church in Pristina in 2001 have
still not been prosecuted, despite the fact that the thieves were recognised and reported to the police.
Protestants are concerned by new plans to introduce religious teaching in
schools, fearing that it will be dominated by teaching of Islam and
highlight differences with minority faiths. "We believe that the
introduction of religion into the school curriculum would lead to
segregation of faiths in wider society," the Protestant report
declared. "Children would be forced to learn the teachings of
religious groups of which they are not part, inevitably those of Islam, in
most of the cases."
Despite calls by Chief Imam Sabri Bajgora and the Council of the Islamic Community last
April for religious education in schools from this September, backed by a
petition reportedly signed by more than 100,000 Pristina residents,
Kosovo's government refused to comply. "I do not believe that the
government will agree with this even in the future," Hamiti told Forum 18. Yet continuing talk of such
religious education makes religious minorities nervous.
The Protestants fear such plans are part of a growing Islamisation
of Kosovo sponsored from outside. "We are alarmed that there are now
an excess of mosques in proportion to the amount of Muslims that actually
attend them, and these mosques are found in central, visible places,"
the report notes. "These mosques have been built by Islamic groups
that are in Kosova as humanitarian organisations and this causes us concern." Local
Muslims have already complained that damaged mosques were restored under
Arab direction in Saudi undecorated style, in contrast to the decorated
style traditional in Kosovo.
Hamiti appears to share these concerns about the
activities of some foreign groups, although he did not openly identify
specific foreign Muslim charities. "Many government and non-government
humanitarian organisations have entered Kosovo
with different programmes which were not concentrated only on aid, but
beside that have contributed and are still contributing to religious
propaganda not compatible with Kosovo society," he told Forum 18.
"I'm concerned that if we are not careful to stop the activity of same
of these organisations in this moment, tomorrow
will be very late and will cause unsolved problems." Hamiti maintained that such organisations
included Christian as well as Muslim charities.
Meanwhile, the assistant to Bishop Sopi, the
leader of Kosovo's 65,000 Catholics, told Forum 18 their community has no
problems. "We have excellent relations with the Muslims and we are favoured by the government," he maintained. He
said the Catholics can build new churches – as they are doing in Pristina.
He added that they have no programmes of their own on Kosovo television,
but their activities are reported in a balanced way. Smaller religious
communities – including the Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists and Hare
Krishna devotees – told Forum 18 they have encountered no serious religious
liberty problems.
Symptomatic of the lack of attention paid to religious liberty is the
failure by two of the major local human rights groups - the Kosovo Helsinki
Committee (a member of the Vienna-based International Helsinki Federation)
and the Council for the Defence of Human Rights
and Freedoms, both based in Pristina - to respond to Forum 18's enquiries. Hamiti maintains that there are no religious freedom
problems, only political ones.
But with religion closely tied to ethnicity in Kosovo and a continuing
legacy of bitter mutual hatred between Albanians and Serbs, religious
freedom continues to suffer in the crossfire - and from the lack of any
effort by the international organisations to
address the problem.
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