This Christmas, Orthodox Christian Serbs were blocked from attending services at their church in Djakovica, a town in Kosovo and Methohija, by an Albanian mob.
Christians who are brave enough to remain in Kosovo have been denied access to places of worship for years.
Since coming into power, the Albanian separatist regime led by Hashim Thaci, has ethnically-cleansed two-thirds of the Christian Serbian population from their ancestral homes in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Methohija. 40,000 Orthodox Christians and other non-Albanian minorities including Roma and Jews have been expelled from the city Pristina.
Over 150 Serbian Orthodox churches, monasteries, and other cultural sites have been vandalized, set ablaze, and destroyed. Many Serbs, including the elderly and the young, have been murdered, victims of horrifying acts of unspeakable violence in savage Albanian pogroms.
Eager to eradicate the remaining Orthodox Christian presence in Kosovo, Thaci’s regime has recently prevented hospitals treating Serbs from acquiring sorely needed medical supplies, and has imposed a 100 percent tax on all Serbian products. Albanian militias have enforced the siege of Serbian populated areas by launching raids of stores for goods with Serbian labels. These were burned in public bonfires.
According to D. Hunter Haynes, the Founder and President of the Orthodox Christian Advocacy Institute (OCAI), the Albanian separatist regime in Kosovo “has nearly managed to rid itself of a 12-centuries-old Christian presence. More than 1,000 Christians have been killed, 250,000 displaced, and 150 churches destroyed.” Haynes writes the Serbian Christians of Kosovo “are fast becoming modern Europe’s non-people.”
Separatist Albanian Hashim Thaci, previously a commander of the Al Qaeda affiliated Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), has been identified by The Council of Europe as the head of a “mafia-like” criminal cartel engaged in heroin, weapons, and human organ trafficking and has turned Kosovo into a hub for the sex slave trade of young women and girls. According to European police, four to six tons of heroin are now trafficked into the EU from Kosovo each month at an estimated value of $2 billion annually.
Church of the Holy Trinity in Djakovica was destroyed in 1999 and burnt to the ground on 17 March 2004. This church shared the destiny of thirty-four other Orthodox churches in Kosovo and Methohija defiled in one day.
In 2016, an intelligence report surfaced that Kosovo is now home to five ISIS training camps where an estimated 300 children, some as young as 7, have been sent by their parents.
Albanian leaders in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, openly declare their allegiance to neighboring Albania. The border between Serbia and Albania has been effectively removed. In November 2018, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama announced plans to complete the annexation Kosovo and Methohija by 2025. This, however, is only the beginning. Their territorial aims are considerably more ambitious.
Church of the Holy Trinity in Djakovica was destroyed in 1999 and burnt to the ground on 17 March 2004. This church shared the destiny of thirty-four other Orthodox churches in Kosovo and Methohija defiled in one day.
A petition started by The Kosovo Project, a nation-wide network of volunteers spearheaded by two attorneys, calls upon President Trump and the United States Congress to defend the persecuted Christian communities in Kosovo and suspend support for the militarization of the Albanian separatist regime. See the link: https://www.change.org/p/president-donald-trump-stop-the-persecution-of-serbian-christians-in-kosovo-and-metohija-4753e226-bcc3-4629-84ca-fe12091c1f62.
To do otherwise is to condemn those Christians and other minorities who remain in Kosovo and Methohija to almost certain annihilation, and will threaten the stability of the Balkans.
Ms. Ruth Gluck is a Jewish-American researcher engaged in advocacy on the topics of Kosovo and Metohija and the experience of the Serbian people during the Holocaust. She lived in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s.