Unknown persons broke into the Orthodox Church of the Holy Great Martyr Nedelja in Gornja Gusterica near Pristina. They broke down the church doors and took believers’ donations from the cupboard where candles are sold.
Priest Vladan Vukomanovic explained to “Kosovo Online” that around two o’clock after midnight, on the night between Friday and Saturday, the perpetrators first broke into the entrance door of the church, and then forcibly opened the cupboard with candles and donations, and then overturned other parts of the church, all the way to the altar and the cupboard where the vestments are kept.
“Minor material damage was caused to the church doors and about 70 euros were taken. They tilted the camera so that the entrance would not be recorded. The footage we downloaded shows two men with phantoms on their heads,” said priest Vukomanovic, the parish priest of Donja Gusterica.
The Office for Kosovo and Metohija announced yesterday that it would inform the international public about the case of the burglary and looting of the Church of the Holy Great Martyr Nedelja, stating that this incident is part of a wave of intimidation of the Serbian people in the central part of the southern Serbian province. Their statement points out that this is the fourth incident that has happened in just a few days, which confirms that this attack on the church facility was neither accidental nor random.
“When burglars masked with phantoms decide to break into a church that is under video surveillance to commit a theft, it is clear that this is not only a crime of greed but the goal is also to create unrest and anxiety among the local Serbs. By constantly creating an atmosphere of insecurity, extremists want to expel Serbs according to a many times proven scenario. We are convinced that with the same motive, they broke into the church in Dobrotin in recent days, wrote KLA on the kindergarten in the same place and desecrated the grave of Ivica Talic in Skulanevo,” the Office for KiM said.
According to them, there can be no excuse for such mistreatment. “And not wanting to speculate on whether the stated incidents were ordered or the work of self-organized individuals, we demand from the representatives of the international community on the ground to react so that this worrying series of obviously ethnically motivated attacks ends,” the statement added.
The office states that the international public will be informed about everything in the hope, as they emphasize, that these diversions will not be treated as something common and normal, because something like that is not normal anywhere in Europe, so it should not be tolerated in Kosmet either.
As a reminder, this is the second burglary of Serbian Orthodox churches in the municipality of Gracanica near Pristina in a few days. Unknown robbers previously, on the night between Thursday and Friday, broke into the Orthodox Church of Saint Demetrius in the neighboring village of Dobrotin and stole a box containing money from believers’ donations.
The burglars broke into the church in Dobrotin when there was no electricity in the village, so the security cameras did not record anything. In Dobrotin, vandals also forcibly broke into the church hall three years ago, from which they took 3,000 dinars. Also, in Dobrotin this month, one person wrote “KLA”, “Albania” and “Free Gaza” graffiti on both the clinic and the kindergarten, while in Skulanevo near Lipljan, the Serbian flag was removed twice from the grave of the recently deceased Ivica Talic, and the perpetrators also damaged the fence at that cemetery.
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Source: Politika; Photo: Kosovo Online