Gracanica Monastery, April 19, 2004


Harri Holkeri
Special Representative of the UN
Secretary General for Kosovo
PRISTINA


Mr. Holkeri,

In this open letter I would like to express my complete horror and sharpest protest subsequent to the conversion of the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Savior in downtown Pristina into a public toilet. On the basis of photographs we received from eyewitness (attached) a number of Roma emigrants from Albania have taken up residence around our church under tents and improvised huts. Undisturbed by local authorities they turned the area which is owned by the Serbian Orthodox Church into a garbage dump and a Pristina eyesore in the immediate vicinity of the University Library and Pristina University.

The photographs we are forwarding to you and which we have already published on the Internet show horrific examples of barbarity unimaginable to a civilized human being in 21st century Europe. In a city which is the center of the UN Mission in Kosovo and KFOR, where you, members of diplomatic missions and numerous foreign citizens are living, in the Province in which 20.000 soldiers and police officers are on duty, a Christian church whose foundation and cross have been consecrated, and in which the Holy Eucharist was served several times, has been transformed into a public toilet and its surroundings into a garbage dump. Not only does the church lack a solid fence and protection, but it has been abandoned to the same fate as more than 140 Orthodox churches destroyed or heavily damaged by Albanian extremists and their fanatic followers since the arrival of the UN Mission and KFOR in June 1999.

By this letter I wish to express my utmost protest to the UN Mission in Kosovo which is directly responsible for controlling the work of the provisional Albanian institutions in which Serbs quite reasonably no longer participate. These quasi-institutions are apparently undisturbed by such spectacles, judging from the similar barbaric scenes we can see in many of our torched churches which have been desecrated by feces and garbage not only since the March 17 Pogrom, but since arrival of your Mission to the Province. We ask ourselves in amazement what kind of education students are getting and what kind of professors they are learning from all the while viewing and tolerating this horror scene and shame in the immediate vicinity of their faculties sponsored by international donations? What kind of monstrous and uncivilized society is being built before your very eyes and under UN protectorate, Mr. Holkeri, in the city which has been completely ethnically cleansed from Serbs during your mandate?

Don't you see that the Christ himself is being crucified in Pristina downtown and hundred of other sites around Kosovo and Metohija, where the ashes and ruins of my churches lie with mutilated images of saints on smashed icons and frescoes? The Lord is being crucified by Kosovo Albanian extremist leaders amidst hatred and cheers of their deluded followers, in the very presence of the international forces. Will you allow, Mr. Holkeri, that you and your mission remain remembered in history in the role of Pilate who washes his hands over this terrible injustice? Will you also allow my remaining churches to be torched and destroyed as the last wound in the ribs of the crucified Lord? I therefore appeal on you to wake up from your illusions about the non-existent success of your mission and finally start doing your job.

My words come from the bitter disappointment with your insincerity. Although by your decree from February 18, 2004 (No. 2004/1) you abrogated the unlawful decision of the Pristina Municipal council to expropriate the church grounds with the still unfinished cathedral, your decision has remained ever since only an empty promise. In my letter to you I also personally requested the church of Christ the Savior urgently to be properly protected with all the surrounding church property. Has this been done? Can we see any protection around the church? In the name of God I am publicly asking you why you did not protect the church but have let it be used as a public toilet and garbage dump? However, you and your Albanian institutions of the Pristina city owe the answer not to me but primarily to Christ the Savior whose holy name has been publicly put to shame.

We demand unconditionally that, as the head of the UNMIK, you undertake urgent measures: that appropriate institutions be instructed as soon as possible that the interior of the church of Christ the Savior and the area around it be cleaned, and that barbed wire be placed around the church and our property be secured with a permanent KFOR checkpoint. We also request the dismissal of Ethem Ceku, the so-called Kosovo minister for spatial planning and urbanism, a former infamous KLA commander in the region of Pec, as well as the resignation of the Pristina mayor, because both of them are directly responsible for this blasphemy.

Otherwise, you will personally be responsible before God Almighty for these acts of shame to which our Church and the Christian faith are being subjected before the eyes of the civilized global community.


+ ARTEMIJE
Bishop of Raska and Prizren
Kosovo and Metohija

Interior of the church of Christ the Savior in Pristina turned into a pubic toilette