DESTROYED AND DESECRATED SERBIAN 
             ORTHODOX CHURCHES IN KOSOVO 
              

                The peace forces of KFOR entered Kosovo 
                on June 13, 1999 with a goal to guarantee 
                peace and security to all inhabitants of the province. 
                But only in the last four months since their arrival, 
                more than 250.000 of Serbs have left or were 
                expelled from their homes. Albanian extremists killed 
                or abducted several hundreds of people and burned 
                thousands of Serb homes. 
                Only in the last two months, in spite of the presence 
                of almost 40.000 elite NATO troops, UN civil 
                administration, numerous humanitarian 
                organizations, NGO's and hundreds of journalists, 
                more than 40 Serb Orthodox shrines, churches and 
                monasteries, have been completely razed to the 
                ground or desecrated. 
 
  

                These acts of vandalism cannot simply be called the 
                acts of individual and blind revenge. It is becoming 
                more and more evident that there is a systematic 
                strategy in the background to annihilate once forever 
                all traces of the Serb and Christian culture in Kosovo, 
                and there are more than 1.400 such 
                sites. Serbian churches and monasteries are usually 
                destroyed by miners with military training, and a veil 
                of tacit conspiracy between the perpetrators and 
                witnesses shrouds all their actions, often reiterated. 
 

                So far KFOR has not managed to stop and prevent 
                further destructions although some of the mined 
                churches are situated only a few hundreds yards 
                from the neighboring military posts. The 
                investigation has not shown yet who stands behind 
                such actions. It is hard to believe that NATO is 
                incapable of carrying out the investigation. On the 
                other hand a suspicion easily arises that the 
                authorities might not be ready to push the thing to 
                the very end. 

                The vague peace, expulsions, murders, ethnic 
                cleansing of the non-Albanian population from 
                Kosovo, arson, destruction of the Serb 
                cultural and religious monuments may be a disturbing 
                evidence that the international community faces 
                more and more the essential failure of its mission. 

                Why did the world resolutely stand up to stop the 
                mass exodus of Kosovo Albanians only several 
                months ago but now watches passively and helplessly 
                the Serbian people and its culture exposed to 
                uncontrolled violence? Can the world allow one 
                European people and its ancient culture to be 
                mercilessly destroyed both physically and culturally? 

               With such a systematic campaign against the Christianity, 
               Civilization and World Culture Kosovo Albanian extremists 
               prove that their goal remains ethnically cleansed Kosovo 
               without Serbs and their Christian monuments.