Reconstruction Results After March Pogrom Devastating
Remains of the Church of St. Basil of Ostrog at Ljubovo near Pec, destroyed by Albanians in November 2002. Kosovo-Metohija, Serbia.
Results of Reconstruction of Serbian Churches and Monasteries in Kosovo-Metohija Devastating
The results of the reconstruction of 35 Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries destroyed in March 2004 pogrom in Kosovo-Metohija are devastating, and there is a tendency to exclude the Serbian Orthodox Church and the state negotiating team from future reconstruction activities, members of the state negotiating team and the Serbian Church representatives said on Thursday.
Raska-Prizren Bishop Artemije told reporters during the press conference held in the Serbian government building that churches and monasteries demolished in the March 2004 pogrom and which are supposedly being reconstructed under the auspices of the Council of Europe, include those “whose reconstruction aims to fulfill a political goal and show that Kosovo-Metohija is ready for a democratic and independent society.”
His Grace Artemije assessed that this kind of “reconstruction” can be viewed as manipulation on behalf of part of the international community, primarily the Council of Europe.
“This does not mean that we are opposed to the reconstruction, but that there are two kinds of the reconstruction process — that which aims to restore the churches and monasteries to their original state, and that which has a political goal to show that Kosovo-Metohija is ready for a democratic and independent society, ” he said.
Serbian Churches and Monasteries in the Province are Not Dead Monuments
Bishop Artemije stressed that there is a key difference in the way Council of Europe and Serbian Orthodox Church regard these objects: while Serbian Church wants them restored for Liturgical services, as fully functional, living temples of worship, European politicians appear to view them as dead monuments, serving merely to demonstrate that Serbian “ethnic and cultural presence”, after all, has been preserved, even if only on the surface and in form without substance.
Responding to the inquiry by the Reuters’ reporter on how many of 156 destroyed churches have been restored, Bishop Artemije said: “Zero, because not one of them was restored to its function, nor brought to its original state, as it was before the demolition.”
Director of the Serbian Institute for the Protection of Monuments, Gordana Markovic, said that a year-and-a-half since the start of the reconstruction, the model agreed with the international community as part of a memorandum, is not sustainable and that there have been attempts to exclude Serbia from the further reconstruction process of the demolished churches and monasteries in Kosovo and Metohija.
Since the arrival of UNMIK and NATO (KFOR), over 150 churches and monasteries have been demolished and torched in the province, while the others were damaged, looted and desecrated.