BULLETIN - Serbian Unity Congress

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TRIP TO KOSOVO AND METOHIJA diers that the reason more Serbs go to Turkey on vacation than to Montenegro is that Serbs and Turks were in a “political union” for a longer period of time. The intelligence, subtlety and sophistication of Bishop Abbot Teodosije and Father Sava would be rare to find in any milieu. They speak softly and never in anger, though sometimes with disappointment. Their understanding of what it takes to live well with ones neighbors and what it takes to survive is both deep and sensible. They are too far from the rest of Serbia to expect any protection or for Serbs to come to the area and work at the monastery; consequently, they have to make certain accommodations. They freely admit that without a continuing international presence their very survival would be at stake. Even with the KFOR presence around the monastery, a few months ago a rocket propelled grenade hit a wall near the church. The monks will not leave their monastery; after all, they say, St. King Stefan Uroš Dečanski is not leaving. However, like the nuns at the Patriarchate of Peć, they too are building a fortified wall for protection. When US diplomats tell them that they should build friendships, not walls, the Abbot says, first the wall then they will be free to build friendships. My colleague Dushan and I told the Abbot about the Robert Frost poem “Mending Wall” and its refrain: “Good fences make good neighbors.” In many ways the monks are selfsufficient and grow their own food, make cheese, have honeybees and a vineyard. We drank their wines, which could have a label saying “Established 1310.” But amid their work and prayers, the monks carry a general disappointment of the lack of understanding of their situation by the outside world and even by their own government. Gračanica Our third stop was Gračanica. On the way we drove through the village of Kosovo Polje near the actual place of the famous battle. The Gazimestan monument was visible from the road but is daily getting more crowded by haphazard real estate development. Everywhere one drives in Kosovo and Metohija, one sees a need for urban planning and zoning regulations. The monastery in Gračanica is in an urban setting. A community of about 8,000 Serbs lives precariously in the area around it. The monastery’s rocky medieval walls have seemingly random patches of three bricks placed either vertically and horizontally. From a distance the patches are not random, they occur in regularly spaced intervals at standing height and kneeling height. These are old defensive openings for guns. Today, the guns are carried by UN troops and by the nearby Albanian Mus- lims. In addition to the wall, the monastery is defended by small traffic barriers, barbed wire and KFOR troops from Norway. Gračanica with its current church, dating from 1321 with its famous fresco of Queen Simonida with the gouged-out eyes, has a very different feel from the other two monastic communities we visited. [See, www.srpskoblago.org/ Archives/Gracanica] This is the seat of Bishop Artemije, whose jurisdiction covers Kosovo and Metohija. The grounds are tired looking and not as pristine as those at Peć or Dečani. The small sisterhood tends a large garden and a recently planted fruit orchard. There are many visitors and events on the enclosed grounds surrounding the church. This walled refuge is a small breathing space for the beleaguered Serbs still left in the area. Yet, normal urban services such as refuse collection are random. Electricity brown-outs occur daily as do water outages. The Albanians control the water and power, and say that every one is subject to these inconveniences. They also claim that the Serbs do not pay regularly so their brown-outs and water outages are longer than those of the surrounding Albanian community. With so few jobs available and with the danger of going to and from work, the Serbs’ livelihood in the area is bleak. When the Belgrade government tries to pay for their utilities, the Albanians and their facilitators do not want 16 www.serbianunity.net Serbian Unity Congress Newsletter, No. 282, Summer 2007
to accept it since they say that end-users are supposed to pay for such services. The political powers play their games. In the meantime, the community is slowly being strangled. Departure The process of “return” to Serbia was also difficult. Our UN escorts left us in Kosovska Mitrovica. Next we had to go through the “border” crossing once more. This time our van with Kosovo plates had to pay an insurance fee on the Serbian side and get “temporary” license plates to be allowed on roads in the rest of Serbia. Serbia does not recognize plates issued by the authorities now controlling Kosovo. The clerk collecting the fee for the temporary plates was out of application forms – he had been out of forms all day and had been turning back “unlicensed” cars. We insisted that he call his manager for forms, which arrived after an endless hour during which time we sat on the side of the road. While treatment like this was inconvenient for us, it only underscores the isolation of the Serbs in Kosovo – this time by their own people. Later while in Belgrade, the director of our office was describing the many steps and papers (including invitations to visit) that she had to contend with in order to get a visa to go to an EU country. After rather successfully and peacefully working on its democracy for almost years ten years, Serbia itself has a wall around it. Ingress and egress throughout the region are fraught with bureaucracy and frustration. The entire visit to Kosovo and Metohija was an experience of walls -- some protective, some exclusionary. A people that must live behind walls to survive is a people under siege. It is elementary to conclude that such a life, deprived of liberty, is not good – not good psychologically, economically, physically, spiritually. The devastatingly sad thing is that the US administration has concluded that the road to liberty does not apply to the Serbs and other minorities in Kosovo and Metohija. There are two parallel ways to look at Kosovo: (i) as an independent country with a tiny Serb and other minority populations or (ii) as part of an intact Serbia with a sizable Albanian and other minority population. In Serbia, Albanians have the right to government-funded schooling in their language and to attend their mosques and go to work unmolested. In an Albanian dominated Kosovo, Serbs are clinging to the edge of an abyss: they cannot come and go without risk and thus cannot work outside their enclaves; they recently have seen their homes, villages and churches burned and their neighbors and friends beaten and killed. Yet, in defiance of logic, the US and much of Europe want to reward the KLA. When speaking with State Department functionaries, they sometimes bring up Milosevic as a reason for siding with the Albanians. When we counter that Milosevic is dead, and before he died he was overthrown by the citizens of Serbia and then sent to The Hague to face a form of justice, they have no answer. When we point out that the burnings and beatings of Serbs in Kosovo are ongoing, they worry about Muslim rioting and sound as sensible as Neville Chamberlain. I am truly disappointed in the policies being pursued by my country. Nonetheless, we are finding a small but growing understanding of the issues in Congress. Our efforts in educating our Senators and Congressmen about the facts cannot stop. If we do not do our part then TRIP TO KOSOVO AND METOHIJA the US will succeed in promoting a fast independence for the terrorists in Kosovo. If the US pursues this blind policy, alluding to Robert Frost once more, in years to come it is sure to regret “the road not taken.” Sharing our Treasures Across the Ages and the World - BLAGO went to Patriarchate of Pec For the past 10 years, the BLAGO (Treasure) Fund established by the Serbian Unity Congress has been preserving and promoting Serbian cultural heritage. Creating computerized virtualreality libraries of the interiors and exteriors of our monasteries, we give people around the world -- Serbs and all others -- a chance to visit these faraway gems of our culture. The center of these treasures historically and in terms of sheer richness, is in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo-and-Metohija, a place that people can today only visit with a 1-202-463-8643 17
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Page 3 and 4: Congressman Dan Burton, co-chair of
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Page 15: go to the nearby cemetery to visit
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BULLETIN - Serbian Unity Congress

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