Mitrovica, Kosovo, February 28, 2022
Photo: kosovo-online.com
Another Serbian Orthodox cemetery has been attacked and desecrated in Kosovo.
Visitors to the Orthodox cemetery in the Albanian part of the city of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo on Soul Saturday this weekend were heartbroken to find more than 80 tombstones destroyed, reports Kosovo Online.
Unfortunately, such attacks are a common occurrence in Kosovo. A cemetery near Gračanica Monastery in the village of Kišnica was desecrated late last year.
“As soon as I walked through the gate, my legs gave way from what I saw,” says one visitor to the cemetery in Mitrovica. “We’re natives… My grandparents, uncle, aunt, father and brother are buried in the cemetery. And I come here with great pain and sadness. We pass by the Albanian cemetery—everything is cleaned and tidied up there, we don’t touch anything there, the dead are not to blame for us.”
“Everything is broken and destroyed. This is barbarism, sadness. We’ve never done that, it’s proof of their culture. They’re trying to erase any trace that we once lived here,” said another visitor.
The Orthodox faithful also found graves at the same cemetery desecrated when they visited on Soul Saturday, November 6.
The city of Mitrovica has been divided since 1999 into the southern part, with an absolute majority of Albanians (about 60,000), and the northern part, dominated by Serbs (about 13,000). The Serbian Orthodox now bury their dead in the north of the city and visit the cemetery in the south for commemorations.
As of earlier this month, there had already been 6 attacks on Serbian Orthodox churches and holy sites in Kosovo just this year.
Follow OrthoChristian on Facebook, Twitter, Vkontakte, Telegram, WhatsApp, MeWe, and Gab!
