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July 21, 2003
ERP KIM Newsletter
21-07-03
CONTENTS:
 COVIC:
KOSOVO - MORE THAN AUTONOMY BUT LESS THAN A STATE
TWO SERB
HOUSES IN OLD PART OF PRIZREN BURNED DOWN
GROUP OF
SERBS SAY GUN FIRE WAS OPENED IN THEIR VICINITY
PREMIER
ZIVKOVIC - KOSOVO AMONG PRIORITY DISCUSSIONS IN U.S.
NOVOSTI:
WHEN BELLS CEASE TO PEAL
TWO
STRONG EXPLOSIONS IN PRISTINA
More News
Available on our:
KOSOVO DAILY
NEWS LIST (KDN)
KDN Archive
This newsletter is available on our
ERP KIM Web-site:
/erpkiminfo.html
COVIC: KOSOVO - MORE THAN AUTONOMY, BUT LESS THAN A STATE
COVIC: "No
politician in Serbia has right to renounce any part of Kosovo and
Metohija... because what Jerusalem is to Jews, that is Kosovo and Metohija
for Serbs"
TOP
Vecernje
Novosti, Belgrade Daily
Belgrade, July 20, 2003
(photo: Dr. Nebojsa
Covic, Serbian Vice-Premier and the Chief of the Coordinatin Center)
 "No
politician in Serbia has right to renounce any part of Kosovo and
Metohija. It is very important that the ruling politicians and those who
will come after us should make an oath, because what Jerusalem is to Jews,
that is Kosovo and Metohija for Serbs, no matter how others react to
this", said Dr. Covic, Serbian vice-premier and the chief of the state
Coordination center speaking for Palma Plus TV.
"No politician in Serbia should demonstrate publicly that Kosovo and
Metohija is a burden and something which obstructs our path to
integrations. In the last time we have seen many lobbists who call for
independence of Kosmet. There is also a new, very dangerous approach -
status before standards, said Covic. The right aproach should be
"standards before status", which means normal life, liberal democracy,
freedom of movement, rule of law and order and return of all displaced
persons. Only in this way we can resolve the problem of Kosovo and
Metohija and fulfill requirements of the Resolution 1244. Its
implementation is essential, and that is a wide autonomy in which all
residents of Kosovo and Metohija will be granted substantial rights, the
rights larger than those of an autonomy but lesser than those of a state.
All this is possible only within the frameworkd of the sovreign state
which is called Serbia, concluded Covic.
TOP
Serbian quarter
"Potkaljaja" in Prizren - ghost town, January
2003
TWO SERB HOUSES IN
OLD PART OF PRIZREN BURNED DOWN
TOP
ERP KIM Info
Service
Prizren, July 20, 2003
(Street scene from the old Potkaljaja
quarter in Prizren, ERP KIM archive)
 On Saturday, July 19 at about
19,00 hours a fire broke out at two Serb houses in Sveta Nedelje Street in
the Serb quarter of Potkaljaja in Prizren. The fire first engulfed the
house of Dragan Levic, who fled Prizren in 1999, and then spread to the
neighboring house owned by Todorka Jovanovic, who is also a displaced
person and who visited her home a few days ago.
The house of Dragan
Levic burned down completely and the house of Todorka Jovanovic sustained
heavy damage. The firefighters who arrived in the meanwhile were unable to
stop the destruction of the fire in time. KFOR units blocked off the
entire Serb quarter. According to official information, no one was hurt;
however, the material damage is enormous. An investigation is in
progress.
REMAINING SERBS IN PRIZREN
DISTURBED
The remaining Serbs in
Prizren are visibly disturbed because after the end of the war in June
1999 Albanian extremists set dozens of Serb houses in the Potkaljaja
quarter on fire. Serb houses have not been set on fire for some time;
consequently, the burning down of these uninhabited houses has caused
renewed fears of a repeat of the events of four years ago. There are
currently some 60 Serbs living in the town of Prizren, most of them
elderly. The old quarter of Potkaljaja, inhabited primarily by Serbs
before the war, is today largely empty. In the immediate vicinity of this
quarter is the seat of the Diocese of Raska and Prizren and St. George
Serbian Orthodox Cathedral, which are still protected by German KFOR
troops.
The Serbs in Prizren
are overwhelmingly convinced that the fire was set intentionally in order
to prevent expelled Serbs from Prizren from returning to their
homes.
DIOCESE OF RASKA AND PRIZREN
CONCERNED BY EVENTS IN POTKALJAJA QUARTER
In 1999 the Diocese of
Raska and Prizren repeatedly requested that UNMIK and KFOR provide better
security in the Potkaljaja quarter and protect it from systematic
destruction. Unfortunately, this quarter, once the pride of Prizren, has
been largely converted into an ash heap and garbage dump. The Diocese has
always insisted that the return of Serb refugees to their homes is the
best way of returning life to the old part of Prizren.
On the other hand,
strong opposition from the Albanian side and the desire to force the Serbs
to sell their property persists. Under pressure and threats that their
houses will be burned down, some of the Serbs from Potkaljaja have already
sold their homes to Albanians. Among the first Albanians to purchase homes
there is Adem Demaci, the former spokesman of the Kosovo Liberation Army
and presently a human rights activists, who purchased one of the oldest
and most beautiful Serb houses in Potkaljaja.
TOP
cleaning the ruins
|
repairing overturned tombstones |
KFOR soldier distributes food |
KFOR offers medical assistance |
scenes from the life of Serb returnees to Belo Polje village near Pec
GROUP OF SERB RETURNEES SAY THAT AUTOMATIC GUN FIRE WAS OPENED IN THEIR
VICINITY IN BELO POLJE VILLAGE
Automatic gun fire opened in immediate proximity
of a group of Serbs who came to visit a burned down home
TOP
ERP KIM
INFO SERVICE
Pec, July 20,
2003
Serb returnees from Belo Polje village claim that unknown person(s) opened fire from an automatic weapon in the
immediate vicinity while they were cleaning up the debris of one of their
burned down houses in Belo Polje village, near Pec.
Radomir Kostic,
Arandjel Arsenijevic, Davor Popovic and Zivko Bozic went to visit the
house of Radomir Kostic this morning not far from the improvised camp for
returnees in the village of Belo Polje near Pec. As they were clearing up
the debris unknown person(s) opened fire from an automatic weapon not far
from them.
The Serbs claimed
that this was an attempt of intimidation. On the other hand the only Serb
deputy in the Pec Municipality, Mihailo Lazovic said to journalists
that the shots came from the nearby military shooting ground which is used
by KFOR.
Local Serbs
confirmed that the Italian patrol immediately came to the location to
investigate what happened.
According to
the Serb returnees in Belo Polje this is the first attempt to date to
frighten the Serb returnees to Belo Polje near Pec. A group of 25 Serb
returnees came back to the ruins of their burned down homes on July 14
with the intent of clearing up the debris and rebuilding their houses.
Italian KFOR units are providing the wider area of the village with mobile
patrols. Fixed control checkpoints were purposely not set up, according to
KFOR representatives, in order "to avoid provoking the local Albanians."
TOP
PREMIER
ZIVKOVIC - KOSOVO AMONG PRIORITY DISCUSSIONS IN FORTHCOMING VISIT TO U.S.
TOP
Radio
Serbia-Montenegro
20.July 03. 15.35
(photo: Premier Zivkovic
(r) with the U.S. Ambassador in Belgrade W.Montgomery (L))
 The
Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Zivkovic,declared that one of the objectives
of his forthcoming visit to the USA would be to appeal to that country as
the most influential world factor, to give its contribution in the
resolution of problems in Kosmet, since the Government of Serbia could not
improve the situation there alone.
We have fullfilled our international obligations as far as Kosovo is
concerned, but the other party has not. As a result we have a criminal
privatization in which UNMIK is selling the property of the Serbian state,
and killings of Serbs there continue being frequent, declared Zivkovic in
an interview given to the Studio B television channel.
TOP
Ancient dome of the Pec Patriarchate still guards
the entrance to the mountain valley
WHEN BELLS
CEASE TO PEAL
TOP
Vecernje Novosti daily, Belgrade
July 14, 2003
By Dragan Damjanovic
For centuries various wars have been waged in Kosovo and Metohija and many
armies have roared across its territory. However, until and during the
most recent war, when peacekeeping forces placed the province under a
protectorate, there were few cases of destruction, burning and desecration
of medieval Serbian holy shrines. Turkish historians claim even today that
individual Osmanites and "their bashiboslug" (servants from the ranks of
the Arnauti or Albanians) destroyed Bogorodica Ljeviska and Holy
Archangels Monastery near Prizren.
During the "Turkish age" the famous fresco in Gracanica to which the
famous poet Milan Rakic dedicated the poem "They have gouged out your
eyes, o beauteous image " ("Simonida") was also damaged. But there are
also positive examples in these times. An Albanian family from Rugove near
Pec passed down the guardianship of Visoki Decani and the Pec Patriarchate
from generation to generation. The Bajrami family from Mazgite near Obilic
protected the monument to Serb heroes at Gazimestan during the past
century.
"During the war several mosques were damaged. After the arrival of
peacekeeping forces, 113 churches and monasteries were destroyed and
burned and 60 Orthodox Christian cemeteries were devastated; ten of these
were completely dug under with a tractor," emphasizes Dr. Slobodan Kostic,
one of the ordained Serb intellectuals from Kosovo and Metohija.
MONASTERIES UNDER GUARD
There are so many monasteries and churches in Kosovo and Metohija that
KFOR does not have enough troops to guard them all. According to some
estimates, a hundred thousand troops would not be enough to protect just
the holy shrines there.
The clergy has only words of praise for troops assigned to protect their
holy shrines. Last year they begged KFOR not to send away the Italian
troops protecting Visoki Decani and the Patriarchate. They, as well as
others, take part in common prayers with the "isolated clergy" during
times of Christian holidays.
For the first two years after deployment, British troops secured the
church of St. Nicholas in Pristina, assisted occasionally by Scotsmen.
They were subsequently replaced by the UNMIK police, which was withdrawn
from the front of the church during the mandate of Michael Steiner, as
well as from the church of the Holy Savior in the city center. The local
authorities rushed to remove the magnificent incomplete latter church,
claiming it was illegally built on land owned by the university. When the
Diocese of Raska and Prizren submitted proper documentation to the
international administration with proof that the church was legally built
and what is more, built on the foundation of an older church destroyed in
long ago wars, the efforts to destroy it ceased. In the only church in
this city only parish priest Miroslav Popadic remains. The church is
visited by only seven believers, the few elderly men and women, who remain
living in the nearby streets.
"Immediately upon their arrival, the soldiers gave me, as well as the
remaining old people, a whistle and a horn so we can make noise in case of
danger or attack against us," emphasizes Fr. Popadic. "However, since even
the UNMIK police has withdrawn, the stoning of the church has become
increasingly frequent. The most recent incident took place some 10 days
ago. I surrendered my own life long ago to the will of God and the only
thing I care about is protecting the church. In it there is an iconostasis
so precious that it is the only one of its kind in our country. However,
no one here understands that."
Fr. Popadic shows evidence of a new problem as well, a telephone bill in
the amount of 1,700 euros. He has not received a regular salary in almost
a year. Due to the lack of money his telephone has been disconnected. He
could not pay the bill of 2,400 German marks four years ago.
"Even if the church was not subjected to stoning, the problem of high
bills is further proof of our inability to survive here. For us here they
only supplanted the earlier kidnappings, murders and burnings," laments
Fr. Popadic. He adds that he does not use the horn because it cannot be
heard further than the gates of the church, which is surrounded by streets
full of automobiles. The seven believers do not blow their whistles,
either; in the last few months, they have not had any major problems.
TREASURE REDUCED TO ASHES
In the 113 destroyed churches and monasteries that have been destroyed,
there were frescoes, iconostases and many things whose material and even
greater spiritual value cannot be calculated in terms of money. This
treasure of inestimable value has been reduced to heaps of ash. Two monks
have also been kidnapped and killed in bestial fashion. However,
increasing numbers of young people from Serbia, Montenegro, Republika
Srpska and other European countries where Serbs live aspire to live the
monastic life in the holy shrines of Kosovo and Metohija. Today there are
some 150 of them, twice as many as before the war.
TOP
TWO
STRONG EXPLOSIONS IN PRISTINA DOWNTOWN
Investigators believe
the explosions were attacks, but there are currently no suspects and the
motive for the attacks is unknown.
TOP
UNMIK
Police
Press Release
Police are investigating two explosions that occurred in the center of
Pristina shortly after 21:00h today. The first explosion was at the
Municipal Court building and the second happened a very short time later
outside Police Station # 2. There are no known casualties from the
explosions and the only confirmed damage was to a UN vehicle parked
outside Station # 2. Officers have not yet been able to fully inspect the
Court building and any damage at that location may not be confirmed until
daytime.
Investigators believe the explosions were attacks, but there are currently
no suspects and the motive for the attacks is unknown.
The Pristina Regional Serious Crimes Squad is in charge of the
investigation.
Derek CHAPPELL
Chief of Information
Jack KRAUS
Public Information Officer
UNMIK Police Main HQ Tel. 038-504-605-5110/FAX 5324
Pristina E-mail: policepresspristina@yahoo.com
Barry FLETCHER Police Regional HQ
Deputy Chief of Information Pristina
TOP
SUGGESTED LINK
"Rastko" Internet Library of Serbian Culture
ERP KIM
Info-Service is the official Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox
Diocese of Raska and Prizren and works with the blessing of His Grace
Bishop Artemije.
Our Information Service is distributing news on Kosovo related issues. The
main focus of the Info-Service is the life of the Serbian Orthodox Church
and the Serbian community in the Province of Kosovo and Metohija. ERP KIM
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www.serbian-translation.com as well as the
Kosovo
Daily News (KDN) News List
Disclaimer:
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