Page 443 - Kosovo Metohija Heritage

The KLa broke into the monastery of Devič on june 10 and stayed there until june 12 until the arrival of French KFOR troops. For three days they looted the monastery and abused the nuns and Hieromonk Serafim, who was beaten in the church altar until he bled from injuries to his teeth and jaw. it is a true miracle of God that no one was more seriously injured during this frenzy and that the Mon- astery was not completely destroyed (as it had been in 1941 by the albanians) although the church was damaged, the icons beaten up (the acronym UÇK—KLa in albanian—was carved into one) and the tomb of St. joanakius of Devič des- ecrated. The albanians tried to open the tomb and used dowels to break the marble tomb cover. The Devič nuns and Fr. Serafim would probably have been killed if Priest Radivoje Panić and abbess Makarija of the monastery of Sokolica had not arrived at the last moment, bringing with them French troops and immediately establishing perma- nent protection for the Monastery. The sisters of the mon- astery of Gorioč, having spent several days locked inside the Monastery, were very relieved to see the first italian troops who later organized the protection of the monas- tery together with the Spaniards. a similar situation oc- curred on the estate of the Peć Patriarchate in Budisavci, which was first protected by soldiers of the italian contin- gent and then by the Portuguese.
at the end of june 1999 representatives of the Diocese of Raška-Prizren and Kosovo-Metohija with an armed KFOR escort visited some parts of Kosovo and Metohija, and saw for themselves that the systematic destruction of our Holy Shrines had begun. The monastery of the Un- mercenary Healers (Sts. Cosmas and Damian) in Zočište and the monastery of the Holy Trinity in Mušutište had already been burned down; shortly afterward, in the month of july, the church of the monastery of the Holy Trinity was also dynamited. in the Suva Reka area both the parish church in the town as well as the beautiful medieval church of the Most Holy Mother of God in the village of Mušutište (built at the same time as Gračanica, in 1315, in brick and sta- lagmite with beautiful frescos) were destroyed. On june 24 about 3,200 Serbs left Orahovac in organized fashion un- der the protection of KFOR. in addition to the 2,000 Serbs remaining in Orahovac, the population of the Serbian vil- lage of Velika Hoča (about 1,000 souls) also stayed. German KFOR organized protection for these people, which made some semblance of survival possible for this last remaining Serbian enclave in the south part of Metohija. However, viewed as a whole, KFOR invested too little effort to bring- ing a decisive end to the violence, which resulted in even greater mistrust among the Serbs and a feeling among the albanians that they had the go ahead to seek revenge from
garding the discovery and exhumation of Serbian bodies because, as one representative of the international community recently stated, all kidnapped Serbs, none of whom has been found yet, have cer- tainly been killed.
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the Serbs. additional proof of this is that Russian KFOR troops were not permitted to enter Orahovac, even though this had been agreed.
in Kosovska Mitrovica the Serbs organized themselves to prevent the entry of the albanians into the northern part of the city, which stopped the albanian influx toward northern, purely Serbian parts of Kosovo and Metohija. in Priština the situation was becoming more and more alarm- ing. in the first days the Clinical-Hospital Center was cleansed of Serbs; after the kidnapping of eminent Professor Dr. an- drija Tomanović, all the other Serb physicians left the hos- pital. The same thing happened at the University. after the murder of three Serbs at the electrotechnical Faculty at the end of june, almost all the professors and their families left Priština. Finally the KLa took over the Grand Hotel and all Serbian owned businesses in the city. The Serbian villages around Priština remained more or less stable and offered first shelter to numerous expelled persons, generally on their way to central Serbia. The situation in Kosovo Polje, Obilić and Lipljan was and remains very difficult but the Serbs have somehow survived there. Unfortunately, the gradual departure of Serbs from these locations would con- tinue, especially from Kosovo Polje, where albanians in- creasingly took over Serbian property, at first by seizure, and later by purchases made under duress.
in the Gnjilane area, after a series of attacks by armed albanians, the Serbian population abandoned the villages of Žegra and Žitinje in june and july 1999. all the Serbian houses were then systematically looted and set on fire, in- cluding the two churches in Žegra. in other parts of Kosov- sko Pomoravlje, the Serbs stayed in their villages while the number of Serbs in the town of Gnjilane itself (over 12,000 before the conflict) decreased with each passing day. a church-people’s council was established at the church in Gnjilane, which regularly recorded the numerous attacks and abuses against Serbs and attempted to mediate an end to the violence through U.S. KFOR. an improvised pri- mary health center, an information center and a humani- tarian shelter for all who sought help were set up in the churchyard. The persistence, flexibility and courage of these people, gathered around their priest, deserve the great re- spect.51 But neither endurance nor persistence has saved the Gnjilane Serbs from terror and all of them were ex- pelled with the exception of some 200 remaining families (about 700 souls). The Serbian population did not leave from the Brezovica area in the traditionally Serb Sirinićka Župa but even increased due to the fact that several hundred Serbs from the Prizren area and Sredska Župa under Šara (also traditionally Serbian). This region (Štrpce i Brezovica) is, in addition to the north of the Province between Mitro-
51 Their written weekly and monthly Reports to the Diocese of Raška and Prizren have been preserved and only a small part has been included in the anthology Nova Srpska Golgota (The New Serbian Golgotha).
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