Page 837 - Kosovo Metohija Heritage

chief of Gračanica UNMiK police station Charles Weber— stated that the cannabis allegedly detected in the Gračanica Monastery garden was just wild growing hemp? (Natural- ly, this news did not stir the public as much as the previous one). Who profited most out of this situation?
it seems that UNMiK policemen know the answer to these questions very well!
UNMiK policemen know that the terrorist KLa has been financed by dirty money of Kosovo albanians’ drug mafia, the mafia which trades in drugs and kills children throughout europe. european public must also hear the words of Gordon Baros, Deputy Director of the Harriman institute at Columbia University in the city of New York: “Kosovo is an entity in which organised criminal influenc- es everything. it is hard to make distinction between a crim- inal and a politician there, since everything is mingled.”
This arresting of abbess efrosinija and this statement of the american expert vividly demonstrate the Orwellian reality in Kosovo and Metohija. Obviously, black is white, and white is black.
another thing keeps looming in our minds... how come that the european Union advocates the return of the exiled Serbs, and on the other side international authorities mock the most beautiful part of what the Serbian and european cultural heritage possess (and that is, for sure, the ancient endowment of Saint King Milutin) and arrest the most em- inent Serbs? if we just add that devastating bombs some time ago fell next to the very Monastery of Gračanica, any other question becomes redundant.
august 12, 2002
LOCaL COURT iN DeČaNi iLLeGaLLY TaKeS aWaY MONaSTeRY LaND
Visoki Dečani, august 9, 2002
On Friday, august 2, 2002, after nine consecutive ses- sions the muncipal court in Dečani, with judge Haki Balaj presiding, annulled the decision of the Government of the Republic of Serbia from 1997 returning to the Monastery of Visoki Dečani a part of the land which was nationalized illegally and without compensation in 1946.
For more than three years there has been continuous pressure from the Dečani municipality to deprive the mon- astery brethren of their right to use the land returned to the monastery by a special contract with the Government of the Republic of Serbia in 1997. This includes two land parcels totalling 23.45 hectares in immediately proximity to the monastery which were, together with 700 additional hectares of monastery property, illegally nationalized in 1946. For years the monastery unsuccessfully sought to cor- rect this injustice and return at least a part of its property; however, the local authorities had simply distributed the greater part of the monastery land into the private hands of albanians, who built their houses on it.
Built on the two above mentioned and now contested land parcels over time were the Visoki Dečani Motel, in the
forest immediately above the monastery, and “apiko,” a small honey-packing plant; both of these were abandoned and have been closed since the beginning of the 1990’s. Fi- nally in 1997 the monastery succeeded in getting these two land parcels and the buildings on them back from the Gov- ernment of the Republic of Serbia. The contract with the Government of the Republic of Serbia was duly processed and recorded in all relevant land registry books, and the brethren began to use their property, which had belonged to the Monastery of Visoki Dečani for centuries.
after the war the newly established albanian munici- pal authorities immediately contested the decision of the Government of the Republic of Serbia and sought every possible means to take away this land from the monastery. in 2000, because of the firm position of the monastery brotherhood on the property issue, two mortar attacks were launched against the monastery in which, fortunate- ly, no one was injured. KFOR secured all monastery prop- erty and UNMiK head Dr. Bernard Kouchner issued a spe- cial letter confirming the right of the monastery to use its own land. However, the municipal authorities pursued the matter and immediately filed a petition which has, in the meanwhile, been transferred to the district court in Peć, only to be bounced back to the municipal court in Dečani. The monastery brotherhood did not attend hearings for the simple reason that the municipal court has no jurisdic- tion in this type of case and because it considered such acts on the part of local municipal authorities to be blatant ex- amples of institutional repression.
The municipal court based its decision on unfounded facts and inaccurate information with the intent of proving the illegality of the decision of the Government of the Re- public of Serbia. Special significance was given to UNMiK Regulation 1999/24, according to which all contracts con- cluded after March 22, 1989 are supposedly “illegal.” The best evidence of the arbitrary interpretation of this regula- tion is the fact that the albanians are not contesting any of the contracts concluded in the last ten years which are to their benefit.
The Monastery of Visoki Dečani will seek protection from UNMiK from blatant institutional repression waged against the last remaining Serb enclave in Dečani munici- pality. While hundreds of hectares of privately-held land owned by Serbs have been usurped by the albanians and state-owned property is being illegally appropriated left and right, UNMiK must nevertheless seek to protect the legitimate rights of the monastery which desires to pre- serve its property and which is essential to its economic survival. The monastery will also officially seek the assis- tance of the Government of the Republic of Serbia which must not allow its decisions to be annulled by court insti- tutions without jurisdiction or objectivity.
Information Service of the Diocese of Raška and Prizren
a Chronicle of the Contemporary Suffering of Kosovo-Metohian Serbs
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