[syndicate] Interfaith holiday celebrations in Kosova (RFE)

[Andrej Tisma]

IVO, JUST A FORWARDING


NATO and the UN install fanatical racists in Kosovo and call it 'multiethnic
peace'.

Orwell, anyone?

===========================================================

In 1998 Robert Gelbard, the State Department's Special Envoy to the Balkans,
said, speaking for his government:

"The UCK is, without any questions, a terrorist group." (Agence France
Presse, 23 Feb. 1998)

UCK stands for Ushtria Clirimtare E Kosoves. In English that's Kosovo
Liberation Army, or KLA.

Since NATO seized the Serbian province of Kosovo in June 1999, completely
opening the border to Albania, the gangster-terrorists of the KLA have been
installed as government leaders with the official approval of NATO and of
the UN organization in Kosovo. That is not hyperbole. [2]

[News story on Kosovo "Prime Minister" starts here]

BELGRADE, July 19 (ONASA) - Kosovo Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi has
abruptly terminated an interview with Belgrade weekly NIN after being asked
whether Albanians were practicing a form of apartheid against Serbs in the
province. He had earlier said that he had been proud to be a member of the
outlawed Kosovo Liberation Army...Rexhepi also played down allegations of
the former Kosovo Liberation Army having had a criminal or terrorist
role...Rexhepi claimed to be certain that no indictments had been raised by
the Hague Tribunal against former KLA commanders now occupying senior
government posts in the province. Nor had Hague Prosecutor Carla del Ponte
ever mentioned the names of leaders of Albanian parties in the province or
asked for documents about them, he said. "According to the information we
have, and believe me it is from reliable international sources.  [3]

[News story on Kosovo "Prime Minister" ends here]

KLA terrorists have forced around 300,000 people to leave Kosovo - Serbs,
'Gypsies,' Slavic Muslims, ethnic Turks, Croatians, Jews and ethnic
Albanians loyal to Yugoslavia. Those Serbs who have remained live under
nightmare conditions. The KLA has systematically attacked Serbian Orthodox
churches, monasteries and graveyards. More than 110 Serbian Orthodox
churches have been badly vandalized or reduced to rubble. [4]

These buildings were not only treasures of Christianity, masterpieces of an
ancient Church; they were also works of art. They belonged to the world.

And they were also at the heart of the culture of a people, the much
maligned Serbs.

Many of these churches had survived 500 years of Muslim rule under the
Ottoman Empire. They survived Austrian rule. They survived World War II,
when Kosovo was ruled by ethnic Albanian fascists allied with Mussolini and
Hitler.

They were destroyed under UN/NATO occupation.

Before you tell yourself, "It's not NATO's fault. They can't be everywhere,"
consider this fact: the terrorist KLA has been desecrating churches since
NATO moved into Kosovo in June 1999 - that's four and a half years ago. Many
churches were attacked more than once. Yet not one terrorist has been
arrested, let alone put on trial. Not a single arrest.

Nor has any terrorist been arrested for driving hundreds of thousands of
people out of Kosovo. This although NATO has intimate knowledge of who the
terrorists are, where they reside, their command structures. Indeed, the
terrorists are presently organized in the UN's Kosovo Protection Corps. They
get regular paychecks. (Your tax dollars at work.) NATO officers preside
over their crimes against Serbs and other 'incorrect' ethnic groups. [5]

Why has NATO unleashed its KLA proxies to destroy these exquisite churches?

Because according to the geostrategic plans of the US and European
establishments, the Serbian people must be broken as an historical force.
And the attempt to break the Serbs - physically and culturally while
attempting to demoralize them politically - this attack on the Serbs is used
to consolidate the power of the most racist part of the Albanian population.
These are the political descendents of the Albanians who sided with Hitler
during World War II. They invented the phrase "ethnic cleansing" to describe
what they wanted to do in Kosovo, which was to 'purify' humanity [sic!] by
ridding it of Serbs: [6]

[Excerpt from 1982 NY Times starts here]

"The [Albanian] nationalists have a two-point platform," according to Becir
Hoti, an executive secretary of the Communist Party of Kosovo, "first to
establish what they call an ethnically clean Albanian republic and then the
merger with Albania to form a greater Albania. "
-- New York Times, Monday, July 12, 1982; "Exodus of Serbians Stirs Province
in Yugoslavia"; by Marvine Howe, Special to the New York Times; Dateline:
Pristina, Yugoslavia

[Excerpt from 1982 NY Times ends here]

Hitler encouraged the idea of Greater Albania when he put Albanian fascists
in power in a large part of the Balkans during World War II; and NATO is
following in the Nazis' footsteps today.

Meanwhile the churches are destroyed to prove the power of the fascist
faction among Albanians, to prove to ordinary Albanians that the fascists
have NATO's backing. The fascists tell other Albanians, "See? We eradicate
their culture but no one gets jailed. NATO is with us!  But publicly we
should act violently dissatisfied and demand even more. Then NATO can 'give
in' to us!"

In a May 1999, op ed piece for the 'N.Y. Times,' President Clinton wrote:

"The people of the former Yugoslavia have lived together for centuries with
greater and lesser degrees of conflict, but not the constant 'cleansing' of
peoples from their land." (NY Times, May 23, 1999)
Clinton purported to be criticizing the Milosevic government. But his claim
that the Serbs practiced ethnic cleansing in Kosovo is a lie, staged for the
camera. [7]

Perhaps Mr. Clinton was making a cynical joke, attributing to NATO's victims
the crimes of NATO's child, the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army, which has,
with the help of NATO and UN officials, destroyed so many of the churches of
Kosovo.

Jared Israel
Editor, Emperor's Clothes

Excerpt from:
http://emperors-clothes.com/churchpics/list.htm


> Andrej, I do not necessarily agree with every word in the articles I
> forward, even if I support their general message. You can't just take
> sentences that I did not write from the context and put them in my
> mouth and then criticise me for them. I mean you can, but then you
> will inevitably provoke sarcastic rebukes.
> ivo
>
>
>
> On 1 Jan 2004 at 19:32, Andrej Tisma wrote:
>
> Very touching. I'm just interested when will Albanians rebuild over
> 100 Christian churches, some from the 13th century, which they have
> blown up, or desecrated since 1999, under the NATO "control"?
>
> >Our religion teaches us not to hate other religions,
> > but we go to celebrate together because Catholics are Albanians just
> > like us,"
>
> Albanians? And what with other nations living there? Or is Kosovo now
> really cleansened, but by Albanians?
>
> Andrej
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo at reporters.net>
> To: "ed Agro" <edagro at verizon.net>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 6:09 AM
> Subject: [syndicate] Interfaith holiday celebrations in Kosova (RFE)
>
>
> > ------- Forwarded message follows -------
> > http://www.rferl.org/balkan-report/
> >
> > Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Balkan Report
> > 19 December 2003, Volume 7, Number 41
> >
> > YOUNG KOSOVA MUSLIMS JOIN IN CHRISTMAS MASS. Dom Nosh Gjolaj, a
> > priest at St. Ndou Roman Catholic Church in the Kosovar capital,
> > Prishtina, expects overflow crowds this Christmas for the
> > traditional midnight Mass celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.
> >
> > This may not seem like anything unusual, but what is remarkable is
> > that about 10,000 members of Father Gjolaj's midnight congregation
> > will be young Kosovar Albanian Muslims. Thousands more are expected
> > at Catholic churches in other towns and cities across Kosova.
> >
> > What's more, the custom is welcomed by the Catholic clergy and
> > generally smiled upon by Muslim religious leaders.
> >
> > Father Gjolaj says he does not know how or precisely when the custom
> > of interfaith visitation began in Kosova. He said he would like to
> > see the phenomenon studied by social scientists. "When it started, I
> > don't know, [at least] since I've been here for the past 11 years,"
> > he said. "But it is obvious that massive participation began before
> > the 1999 war. I think we're talking about approximately 10,000
> > people, most of them standing inside the church's front yard, since
> > there was not enough place for all of them inside."
> >
> > More than 90 percent of Kosova's 2 million people are Muslim. Kosova
> > has been under UN administration since 1999, when a NATO air war
> > ended a Serbian campaign of ethnic cleansing aimed at Albanians in
> > the province.
> >
> > The Kosovar Muslim interest in Christmas signals neither an
> > abandonment of Islam nor the adoption of Christian belief. Blerta
> > Krasniqi plans to attend Christmas Mass at Father Gjolaj's church
> > this year. She's a Muslim who lives in Prishtina. "It is a fact that
> > I will participate because I have friends who are Catholics. It
> > doesn't have to mean that since I'm a Muslim I won't go. I go
> > because of my friends and that's it. Our religion teaches us not to
> > hate other religions, but we go to celebrate together because
> > Catholics are Albanians just like us," Gjolaj said.
> >
> > Albanians in both Kosova and in Albania proper have long expressed
> > pride in their religious tolerance, a tolerance that survived more
> > than 50 years of communist rule, when the official religion was
> > atheism. And that flourishes even now when Islamic terrorism and the
> > Western war on terrorism have given new currency to fears of a
> > "clash of civilizations."
> >
> > In any event, Islam came to the Balkans from the Ottoman Empire and
> > not the Middle East. Balkan Islam is a relatively flexible,
> > borderland faith, not generally known for dogmatism. Many Muslim
> > Kosovar Albanians are aware, moreover, that their own ancestors
> > probably were Roman Catholics before the Turks came to the Balkans.
> >
> > The president of the Islamic Union in Kosova, Naim Ternava, says he
> > regards the Christmas custom as benign, an honoring of both faiths
> > by youthful churchgoers. "Their participation at Catholic churches
> > speaks of tolerance fed by Islam toward other religions.
> > Religiously, we are allowed to be present inside the churches, not
> > to do Christian ceremonies, but only to be present, to respect other
> > religions. Therefore, the participation of Muslims on Christmas Eve
> > gives a strong message that Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance,
> > respect, and honor towards other religions," Ternava said.
> >
> > Other signs that ethnic Albanian Muslims are comfortable with the
> > Catholics in their midst stem from both recent and more ancient
> > history. Among the two most important historical personalities to
> > Albanians are the 15th-century national hero Gjergj
> > Kastrioti-Skenderbeu, a Catholic who first embraced Islam and then
> > returned to his original faith and fought for liberation from the
> > Muslim Ottoman Empire, and the Catholic nun Mother Theresa, the
> > world-famous ethnic Albanian who was beatified at the Vatican
> > earlier this year.
> >
> > Kosovar Albanians also remember that it was the United States and
> > NATO -- and not other Muslim states -- who came to their rescue in
> > the 1999 war over Kosova.
> >
> > Kosovar President Ibrahim Rugova, who keeps a portrait of Pope John
> > Paul II on his office wall, has won both Muslim and Catholic support
> > for a proposal to build a Roman Catholic cathedral in central
> > Prishtina. At present, most religious buildings there are mosques,
> > along with some older Serbian Orthodox churches and the abandoned
> > shell of a Serbian Orthodox cathedral begun during the rule of
> > Milosevic.
> >
> > The warmth shown by Muslims toward Roman Catholics is reciprocated.
> > A young Albanian Catholic spoke to our correspondent in Prishtina:
> > "I am Nyrton Dedaj, a Catholic from Peja. Not only now, but even
> > before the war, a large number of Muslims took part during the Mass.
> > After the war, the participation has grown, and this is a very nice
> > custom. We celebrate together, contributing to each other. After
> > all, we're one nation. We don't look at our religious differences.
> > We respect them, be they Catholic or Muslim. It is tolerance."
> >
> > Father Gjolaj says he thinks Muslims in Kosova began attending
> > Catholic Christmas as a kind of entertainment, a social happening
> > that grew into a powerful statement of brotherhood and unity. "I
> > think that at some point [ethnic] Albanian youth in Kosova didn't
> > have any kind of entertainment, and they didn't spend much time
> > together. So through Christmas they got together at the church's
> > front yard. In this way, a custom was achieved. Another element is
> > also important -- the fact that this nation lives in and is a part
> > of Europe. Even more, it shows that Ilyrians, Albanians, are the
> > seedbed of European culture. This is where European civilization and
> > culture got started," Gjolaj said.
> >
> > Islamic Union President Ternava concurs: "I wouldn't say that is
> > only a custom, but then again, it's something that came out of our
> > past, although not 100 percent. It is also something that came out
> > of our religious lessons, as well, having in mind that Christian
> > teaching also proclaims inter-religious tolerance. It depends on
> > church or mosque leaders -- how much do they respect the principles
> > of the Bible or the Koran?"
> >
> > Whatever the motive -- entertainment, social custom, or religious
> > statement -- the interfaith visitation appears to have taken
> > tenacious hold in Kosova. It has grown year by year and shows no
> > sign of abatement. (Don Hill and Melazim Koci, with contributions by
> > RFE/RL's Prishtina bureau and Patrick Moore) Ivo Skoric 1773
> > Lexington Ave New York NY 10029 212.369.9197 ivo at balkansnet.org
> > http://balkansnet.org
> >
> >
>
>
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