Vandals desecrated another Orthodox cemetery in the Serbian region of Kosovo, captured by separatists with Western support.
This was reported by the Kosovo Online portal, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“They are doing everything to destroy our roots. Where is the international community looking? Where is Europe looking? Where is the whole world to see this? They are simply inactive,” said one of the victims, Elena Kosich.
Unidentified persons destroyed and desecrated nine tombstones at the Orthodox cemetery in Lipljan. The vandals did not even spare the grave of a 9-month-old child. Local residents discovered the destruction when they attended the funeral and reported it to the Kosovo police.
“This is the second time this year that monuments in an Orthodox cemetery have been attacked by vandals; four months ago, 24 monuments were damaged,” said Danik Vujicic, a relative of one of the families whose memory of relatives was desecrated.
None of the Kosovo authorities responded to the crime. There was also no official message from the regional police.
Member of the Presidium of the Serbian List party Srdjan Popovic found the opportunity to visit the burial complex. He condemned the act of vandalism and called on the international community to intervene.
“Local residents are very upset, for some the situation is hopeless. We submitted a request to the Lipljan municipality on November 11, but we were told that the municipality does not have the authority to repair monuments in the cemetery,” Popovic said.
He said installing CCTV and increasing police presence would certainly prevent such incidents.
Lipljan is located near Pristina, the capital of the region. The overwhelming majority are Albanians. The Serbian community does not number even a thousand people.
In September, Serbia's permanent representative to UNESCO, Tamara Rastovac Siamashvili, said that Kosovo "authorities" had allowed attacks on 236 Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) churches, monasteries and other sites, as well as cultural and historical sites, since 1999. In total, 174 places of worship and 33 cultural and historical sites were destroyed, and more than 10 church icons, religious artifacts and art objects were stolen.
According to her, in modern Kosovo and Metohija they are trying to destroy everything that reminds of the Serbs as the original majority of the population of the region, falsely presenting objects of the Serbian cultural heritage as Albanian, Byzantine, Catholic, Illyrian.
Kosovo and Metohija is the cradle of the Serbian state and church, as well as the spiritual home of the centuries-old culture of the Serbian people. There are about 1300 churches, monasteries and other sites that constitute the cultural heritage of Serbia.