The Holy
Hierarchical Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church, at their special meeting held
at the Patriarchate on February 17, 2008 brings the following public address for
the local and international media regarding the latest events in Kosovo and
Metohija:
As the Church has stated countless times in the past also now
she states that Kosovo and Metohija was and must remain an integral part of
Serbia, in accordance to the United Nations Charter, the Security Council
Resolution 1244, as well as all other similar international conventions on human
rights and the rights of a people and the protection of internationally
recognized borders. Any other decision represents a violation of Divine and
human laws, as well as an assault with long ranging consequences, for both the
Balkans and all of Europe. All internationally recognized and ratified
conventions, not annulled till now by any international act, beginning with the
Agreement concluded in 1913, the international resolutions dated 1918 and 1945,
to until the UN Security Council Resolution 1244 from 1999, together with the
recent acceptance into UN membership of integral Serbia, all confirm that
excluding Kosovo and Metohija from Serbia represents a form of violence equal
only to the periods of occupations and tyranny, which we hoped definitely
belonged to the past of Europe and the world. In this particular case it
represents a new legalization of the centuries-old Ottoman tyranny and its
impact on the entire region, as well as a repetition of the application of a
Fascistic solution (that of Mussolini and Hitler) to the Kosovo question from
the time of World War II, when Kosovo and Metohija were annexed to so-called
Great Albania, when hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Serbs were expelled from
their homes, just like in 1999, with the objective of not having them return,
ever.
Having said that, what deeply astonishes us is the fact that,
according to the words of one American ambassador, with the now announced
illegitimate and illegal recognition from governments of the United States of
America, England, Germany, France, Italy, and others, of the self-declared
Kosovo independence – Serbia and Montenegro were bombarded in the first place.
Therefore, the presumed protection of human and minority rights of bombing by
using bomb attack with the code name “Merciful Angel” represented only a
preparation for this final violation of justice and the gutting of Serbia’s
heart from her bosom.
Thus, considering this proclamation of the
independence of Kosovo as illegitimate, a violent act against justice, the Holy
Hierarchical Synod and our entire Church, in hopes of a more sooner victory of
God’s justice and true human rights, calls upon His Grace Bishop Artemije of Ras
and Prizren, his clergy, monastics and the entire Kosovo-Metohija Serbian
Orthodox people, as well as others in Kosovo jeopardized by this unjust act, to
remain on their homesteads and with their holy sites, preserving peace and
confidence in the final victory of God’s justice, having love towards everyone
as it is fitting us. May they, in the words of the Apostle Paul, in these
difficult times, as they have till now, especially in the Kosovo pain-enduring
history, “commend ourselves as ministers of God: in much patience, in
tribulations, in needs, in distresses…by the word of truth, by the power of God,
by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honor and
dishonor” (2 Cor. 6:4-8). Let us always have before our eyes and in our hearts
the victorious word of the true God: “Who endures to the end will be saved”.
We await from the United Nations and the Security Council that, in the
spirit of their Charter 1244, as well as their international obligations, that
they defend and protect this violation of human, religious and the state rights
of the Republic of Serbia.
Head of Russian Church slams Kosovo independence
Moscow, February 20, Interfax – Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia
has slammed Kosovo’s unilaterally declared independence.
Kosovo’s
independence, declared on Sunday, “is an anti-historic event that upsets the
global balance and that may lead to very tragic events in a whole series of
spots on the globe where separatist sentiments are being fanned,” Alexy said
answering questions from journalists in Moscow on Wednesday.
Alexy II
cited himself as saying in a speech at the Council of Europe Parliamentary
Assembly in October 2007 that advocates of independence for Kosovo were “people
who had never been to Kosovo, didn’t know the history of that land, and didn’t
know what Kosovo means to the Serbs.”
The Battle of Kosovo in June 1389
was “a battle for the existence of the Serb people,” the patriarch said. He
mentioned that the battle took place nine years after the Battle of Kulikovo,
which ended Tatar-Mongol rule in Russia.
Alexy II also said that a
tremendous number of Orthodox churches and monasteries in Kosovo that are “a
part of general European heritage” and are under UNESCO patronage “were and are
being destroyed.”
