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La Gazette de Montréal 27 février 2000
Montreal Gazette / Sunday 27 February 2000
God's houses in ruins
The world keeps silent as Serb churches, monasteries are destroyed in Kosovo under noses of peacekeepers
by MARK ABLEY / The Gazette
The Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas, in the Kosovo village
Banjska, was probably not an international treasure.
As far as we know, it was just a modest house of God in an area
dotted with the same. But no one may ever be sure. On Jan. 30, 11 kilograms of explosives
were detonated at the altar, leaving much of the building in ruins.
The explosion forms part of a sad and continuing pattern. Since a
wary peace took shape in Kosovo in June 1999, nearly 80 of its
Orthodox churches and monasteries are known to have suffered
heavy damage or destruction. The total may be higher, given that a
lot of churches are located in remote areas where few, if any, Serbs
still live.
These attacks did not occur during the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization's bombing campaign last spring. They have happened
since the return of Kosovo's Albanian majority. Extremists, usually
assumed to be linked to the Kosovo Liberation Army, have carried
out a systematic campaign of destruction under the eyes of
international peacekeepers.
The unanswered question is why this devastation has caused so little
outcry. British and French media have paid some attention to the
attacks; but the North American media have carried few reports.
Dozens of non-profit groups are now working in Kosovo; they have
said next to nothing.
"The Western world is rather fed up with the Balkans," suggested
Colin Kaiser, chief of the unit for southeast Europe and the Arab
states in UNESCO's Division of Cultural Heritage. "The wars, first
in Croatia, then in Bosnia and most recently in Kosovo, became
more and more intense in terms of damage. But the cumulative
effect has been that the Western sensibility to it all has been dulled." True enough. But beyond that, it also seems true that after the wars
of the past decade, few Westerners dare to sympathize with anything
Serbian.
Last September, Bishop Artemije, the head of the Orthodox diocese
of Raska and Prizren, charged that while the first aim of the Kosovo
Albanians "is to expel all Serbs, the second is to eradicate all traces
and witnesses that could serve as evidence that the Serbs have
existed at all.
"But who and what are the witnesses? Churches, monasteries and
holy places. So they set out to destroy the witnesses, to obliterate the
traces. In 2 months more than 70 monasteries and churches were
burned or demolished. Among them were the churches built by our
illustrious and holy ancestors in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries.
The churches and monasteries, which survived 500 years of Turkish
occupation, did not endure two months in the presence of a 50,000-
strong international 'peacekeeping' force."
Peacekeeping troops from the United Arab Emirates, serving in the
United Nations' multinational KFOR mission, had been stationed
near the Church of St. Nicholas. But in late January they withdrew,
leaving the church unprotected. It was soon blown to pieces.
The presence of the UN soldiers has slowed the rate of destruction in
recent months, but foreign troops can provide no guarantee of safety.
On Jan. 14, for instance, the Church of St. Elias, in a village called
Cernica, was partly destroyed by explosives. It stood just 70 metres
from a checkpoint of U.S. soldiers.
Almost everyone would agree that the destruction of St. Elias's and
St. Nicholas's churches is regrettable. But what has so far escaped
much notice, particularly in North America, is that dozens of the
earlier victims were not just Serbian village churches, but buildings
of great beauty and historical significance. Among them:
- The Church of the Holy Virgin in Musutiste, built in 1315.
Frescoes painted in the following years were among the finest
examples of medieval wall-painting in the entire region. The church
was looted, burned and mined by explosives.
- The Church of St. Nicholas in Prizren, which is said to date to 1348
or earlier, and which contained medieval icons. Five explosives went
off, causing extensive damage.
- The Monastery of the Holy Trinity near Musutiste, built from 1465
on. It held a unique library of manuscripts as well as a collection of
recent icons. The monastery was first plundered, then burned and
finally leveled with explosives.
- The Monastery of the Holy Archangels in Gornje Nerodimjle, built
in the 14th century, renewed and extended in 1700. The monastery
was looted and burned; a great pine tree, said to date from 1336, was
chopped down and burned; the cemetery was desecrated.
The stories go on and on. The pattern is undeniable - and for once,
no one is even trying to claim that Yugoslavia's notorious president,
Slobodan Milosevic, is behind it.
So far, thanks to a 24-hour guard by foreign soldiers, the greatest of
all treasures in the region
- the monastic churches of Gracanica and
Decani - have survived. Writers have waxed eloquent about them for
generations; Rebecca West, for one, called Gracanica "as religious a
building as Chartres Cathedral. The thought and feeling behind it
were as complex. ä There is in these frescoes, as in the parent works
of Byzantium, the height of accomplishment."
Some of the buildings were jewels of European civilization. Now
they are rubble.
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