Zvečan, Kosovo and Metohija, May 30, 2023
Photo: mitropolija.com
The Serbian Orthodox bishop in Kosovo visited the local parish community in Zvečan last night to pray for peace at the scene of the violent confrontation last week.
His Grace Bishop Teodosije of Raška and Prizren exhorted the faithful of the Church of St. George:
We need calmness, we need patience. I’m asking you to ask for what belongs to us with dignity and peace. If we make mistakes, our enemies will rejoice. I’m asking you for wisdom, for patience. We’ve suffered a lot, we’ve endured a lot, to be led on the wrong path even now. From this place I also say that trampling other people’s grass does no one any good. It’s not the first time, brothers and sisters, that we’re in this kind of danger.
His Holiness Patriarch Porfirije also sent a message of support to the Serbian people of Kosovo after a moleben held before the relics of St. Nikolai (Velimirović) in Belgrade:
May the prayers of the Holy Hierarch Nikolai be with all of you, and especially today with all our brothers and sisters in Kosovo and Metohija. May peace descend upon the land of Kosovo and Metohija, upon our brothers and sisters, but also upon all the people who live there, through the prayers of the Holy Hierarch Nikolai.
The diocese issued a statement earlier this week, urgently calling upon the EU, the ambassadors of the US, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK, and the NATO Mission in Kosovo (KFOR) to do everything possible to prevent the further escalation of violence in northern Kosovo.
“The open collective criminalization of the Serbian people by Kosovo politicians is unacceptable and is the result of the fanatical ideology of the ruling Kosovo Albanian structure against everything Serbian,” the diocese writes.
According to the diocese, a violent confrontation broke out in Zvečan when “heavily armed Kosovo police forcefully occupied the municipality building of Zvečan, which is almost entirely inhabited by Serbs, with the aim of installing at any cost the [ethnic Albanian—OC] mayor elected in the recent extraordinary municipal elections that the entire Serb population of the four majority Serb municipalities in northern Kosovo and Metohija boycotted.”
“Due to the determined protest of Serbian citizens not to allow the violent occupation of the buildings … there was a violation of public order and peace,” the diocese reports.
The police used tear gas and stun grenades and 10 citizens were injured. At the same time, KFOR reports that 25 of its troops were injured.
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