Slobodan Milosevic’s Infamous Church is Illegal!

Freedom is more powerful than fear. Bigotry wont keep us safe.
– President Barack Obama

The Serbian Church in the Heart of Pristina University Campus is an illegal, primitive and anti-civilization political act. This is because it symbolizes infamous history when dictator Slobodan Milosevic conquered Kosovo by paramilitary and police forces. Milosevic ordered closure of the Albanian University of Pristina. Hundreds and thousands Albanian students and professors were compulsory forced to abandon their buildings at the university and remained in the streets for ten years (1989-1999).

This is main reason the Serbian political and tyrannical Church should be removed from the Pristina University Campus. It recalls torture, terror, segregation, expulsion and victimization of hundreds and thousands of Albanian students and professors over the course of the past three decades of Slobodan Milosevic’s paramilitary, police and military regime. The regime used force to close all Albanian schools, colleges, faculties and University in Kosovo (1989-1999). It ended when NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days on March 24 – June 10, 1999, to release and protect over 2,500.000 million Albanians from Serbian aggression, terror and genocide in Kosovo (1989-1999).

I respect all religions and beliefs around the world, but not those that are violent, divisive, intolerant, discriminatory or deny the universal values of humanity and civilization.

To avoid being misunderstood i.e. to be clear, I’m not against any religious symbols such as churches, temples, mosques, synagogues etc., and against any culture and civilization in the world because all peoples have the right to have them, and practice their religions around the globe.

This is not controversial at all. We all know, and we are aware of this important issue. We also know that all of religious, cultural and historical monuments of the world are protected by international institutions such as UNESCO of the United Nations. So, morally and legally, we respect and protect these because they are inviolable on any basis, be it? humane, religious, moral or legal. Period.

However, I do not support, nor worship, in any form, those religious objects built with the political and mafia mission to destroy and deny the universal values of the world civilization.

Those universal values include history, human rights and freedom, culture, religion, national identity. In the arbitrary case of the Serbian POLITICAL CHURCH, it was built in the Pristina University campus of Republic of Kosovo by dictator Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s. It was only built to deny Albanians’ rights and freedoms on their own legacy property.

Being that Serbs in Pristina, and in other cities and villages of Republic of Kosovo have been building their churches and monasteries since the XIV century, when they conquered Albanian territories in Balkans. But Albanians have never denied Serbs their churches, even though they have been built in the indigenous ethnic Albanian lands, including Kosovo.

Serbs didn’t have any need to build a church in the courtyard of the University of Pristina with special historical, political, religious and provoked message addressed to Albanians. This church, this earth, this sky, this University are the head, heart and the cradle of the Serbia!

Such a primitive political and religious example does not exist anywhere in the world. This is a political problem that could generate interethnic and religious conflicts between the Albanian majority (90%) and Serbian minority (8%). The Municipality of Pristina as soon as possible should adopt the proper law on legalization of this church, not within the Pristina University Campus, but in another location in the city of Pristina.

If the Municipality of Pristina with its law does not order the displacement of that political church , then, as a second step, the Serbian Church and Government could seek the return and restoration the infamous of monuments of Slobodan Milosevic, Vuk Karadzic and Milos Obilic, and others. … In a word, restoring the colonial sovereignty of Serbia in Kosovo.

They are already seeking the revision of the political, judicial and constitutional statute of the independent and sovereign state of Kosovo through the political and diplomatic Dialogue in Brussels (2011-2016); through the Six Point Plan of Ban Ki Moon and Vuk Jeremic; through a Footnote Agreement, and by Resolution 1244 of the United Nations, which neither de facto nor de jure does not recognize Kosovo as independent and sovereign state even though it is recognized by the 113 countries of the United Nations (2008-2016).

Instead of churches and mosques, the campus of the University of Pristina must have the other symbols with intention to bring together people regardless of their religion, culture, belief race, color, language, tradition, history etc. which symbolize humanity, altruism, love, peace, cosmopolitism, diversity, multiethnic, pluralist eagerness for knowledge, science, progress and cooperation in European and global dimensions. Such monuments, would have to be figured in the Pristina University Campus, not that of the Serbian church, which is out of operation (1989-2016) that recalls the horror of the Albanian victims during the occupation of Kosovo (1989-1999). Such symbols are not relevant, and should need not any university in Europe or the world because their mission is anti-human and dirty politics. They appeal to division, hatred, discrimination, and wars between peoples with different religious and cultures around the world.

We need to live in peace, in harmony in good faith and in full understanding between each other, not in hatred, hostility and endless war.

Mehdi Hyseni is an Albanian Ph.D. in International Political Relations, residing in Boston.