Who Will Protect Kosovo’s Christians?

Acton Institute ^ | May 24, 2006 | by John Couretas, Director of Communications

[Bokababe]

Who Will Protect Kosovo’s Christians?

by John Couretas, Director of Communications

This week, Montenegro voted to end its union with Serbia, the last remaining alliance of the former Yugoslav federation. News accounts of the vote frequently add matter-of-factly that Kosovo, the Serb province placed under the administration of the United Nations in 1999, is next in line to gain its independence and probably by the end of the year.

But anyone who cares about religious freedom, the rights of minorities, and the rule of law should be highly skeptical of an independent Kosovo. Since 1999, when a NATO bombing campaign drove out Serb military forces fighting an Albanian separatist movement, the Orthodox Christian minority in Kosovo has been under intense pressure from Albanian Muslim extremists.

In a Feb. 18 letter to President George Bush, the Serbian Orthodox bishop Artemije of Kosovo and Metohija – the ranking church official in the region – said that granting the province independence would hand terrorists “a significant victory” in Europe.

“Detaching Kosovo from democratic Serbia would mean a virtual sentence of extinction for my people in the province – the larger part of my diocese – who continue to face unremitting violence from jihad terrorist and criminal elements that dominate the Albanian Muslim leadership,” the bishop said....................

[Bokababe]

http://www.kosovo.net/news_pogrom.html

How can we Americans sanction and reward this behavior by giving the Albanians "independence" for Kosovo?

We can't!

www.savekosovo.org

[BW2221]

Wesley Clark will protect Kosovo's Christians./sarc.

Seriously, didn't Clark recently convert from Catholicism and become a Jew? I hope so, because I'm Catholic and don't want him being one of us.

[Bokababe]

Don't know for sure, but I doubt that the Jews would have him either!

[ncountylee]

How many churches have been torched in Kosovo by the filthy ROP?

[GipperCT]

Love the the President's steadfastness in the WOT, but it really perplexes me why he has not given Kosovo and the attention it needs.

[Steve Van Doorn]

We got on the wrong side in the first place. We screwed up and now we are paying for it.

[Bokababe]

Over 100 -- many of them ancient, some as early as the 13th & 14th Century.

These are the are in the same region that St. Paul, and later Cyril & Mehtodius travelled to spread the Gospel of Christianity -- and we've watched them be wiped out under the noses of the UN, without any effort to preserve them.

[BW2221]

Dozens of churches, monasteries and shrines have been destroyed or damaged since 1999 in Kosovo, the cradle of Orthodox Christianity in Serbia. The Serbian Orthodox Church lists nearly 150 attacks on holy places, which often involve desecration of altars, vandalism of icons and the ripping of crosses from Church rooftops. A March 2004 rampage by Albanian mobs targeted Serbs and 19 people, including eight Kosovo Serbs, were killed and more than 900 injured, according Agence France Press. The UN mission in Kosovo, AFP said, reported that 800 houses and 29 Serb Orthodox churches and monasteries – some of them dating to the 14th century -- were torched during the fighting. NATO had to rush 2,000 extra troops to the province to stop the destruction.

[Bokababe]

Actually, the remaining Christians there are "paying for it" even more.

But, it is well-known that the semtex for the London and Madrid bombings came from these same thugs.

[GipperCT]

True, sadly.

LOVE the link on your home page! Got my Memorial Day weekend off on the right start, thanks for creating it!

[Steve Van Doorn]

Two of the 911 attackers came from the KLA.

[ncountylee]

Genocide is around the corner, once the filthy ROP has an independent rat hole.

[BW2221]

As a "compassionate conservative," President Bush doesn't realize that the problem isn't just Al Qida or radical Islam, but Islam itself.

Islam is incapable of peacefully coexisting with other religions and is also incompatible with democracy. The leader of CAIR stated that Islam isn't in the U.S. to be just another religion, but the dominant religion and hopes that one day the Koran will be the highest authority. Let's face facts, if Muslims ever gain the majority, it's the Sharia for us.

George Bush has said that "Islam is the religion of peace" crap so much that I think he believes it.

[Al Simmons]

"Two of the 911 attackers came from the KLA."

Never heard this before. Documentation, please.

[soupcon]

It's just mind-boggling that before the breakup, the Christians and Muslims were not only tolerant of each other, but downright neighborly.
Nationalism and bloodlines trump religion every time.
America is the exception due to our relatively short history and Nation of Immigrants status.

[Bokababe]

Thank you, Steve, more than you know!

My beloved father died six years ago today. He was represented to me by both one of immigrants at the docks, and also one of the guys in the US Army uniform, as he had been both!

I am still wiping away the tears.

[Spirited]

Didn't you know? Courtesy of W only Christian are expendable.

[norton]

"Didn't you know? Courtesy of W only Christian are expendable."

More correctly in this instance..
Courtesy of WJC.

But GW won't allow any badmouthing of prior US intervention lest it reflect on present or future US interventions.

Pretty much always been thus - remember the great hostage rescue?

[Digger]

As a "compassionate conservative," President Bush doesn't realize that the problem isn't just Al Qida or radical Islam, but Islam itself. Islam is incapable of peacefully coexisting with other religions and is also incompatible with democracy. The leader of CAIR stated that Islam isn't in the U.S. to be just another religion, but the dominant religion and hopes that one day the Koran will be the highest authority. Let's face facts, if Muslims ever gain the majority, it's the Sharia for us. George Bush has said that "Islam is the religion of peace" crap so much that I think he believes it.

So true & so obvious.