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KOSOVO
Orthodox churches destroyed
Dynamite attacks continue
In mid-July another Serbian Orthodox church in Kosovo was reduced to rubble, the latest in what appears to be a systematic campaign to destroy all Serbian Orthodox religious sites in the disputed province, a campaign which the Orthodox blame on Albanian extremists, according to the Keston News Service based in England.
With more than 100 buildings either destroyed or badly damaged in the year since the Kosovo Stabilization Force (KFOR) and the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) took over the administration of the province under the United Nations mandate, Serbian Orthodox representatives have said the international administration is not doing enough to protect their places of worship. The chairman of the Kosovo Helsinki Committee said it had not yet been proved that Albanians were behind the attacks and called on KFOR and UNMIK to do more to investigate the incidents and to prevent further attacks. However, an UNMIK spokesman rejected Albanian suggestions that such destructions might be the work of agents of Belgrade and backed up Serbian Orthodox claims that Albanians were to blame.
The Church of the Holy Prophet Elijah in Pomazatin, on the left bank of the river Drenica, west of Pristina, was dynamited in a powerful explosion late on July 16. The church—built in 1937 and partially destroyed in 1941—was rebuilt in 1965 and served as a parish church until several years ago, when it became partially inactive. On August 3, 1999, attackers used a hand grenade to destroy the entrance.
The former parish priest of Pomazatin, Father Radivoje Panic, visited the ruined church in the wake of the July 16 attack. “He called us and reported that the Albanian extremists used 30 kilograms of explosive to completely destroy it. There is only a pile of stones left. A very sad picture, very sad,” Srdjan Jablanovic, head of the Raska and Prizren diocesan office in Belgrade, said.
The Pomazatin church was the third in six weeks to be dynamited after earlier damage by burning or looting. On June 29 attackers used dynamite to destroy St. Paraskeva church in Podgorce village, in the municipality of Kosovska Vitina. This church had been seriously damaged in August last year, but this time was completely destroyed. At the end of May the Church of St. Nicholas in Srbinje village near Gracanica Monastery was attacked for the third time in ten months and finally destroyed in a dynamite explosion.
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