Spanische Königin überreicht einer Serbin den Kultur Abward für den Schutz von Kultur Gütern im Kosovo vor den Kosovo Taliban

28.1.2008 by admin.

Indeed, since the end of NATO’s air campaign in 1999, over 150 Serbian Orthodox churches, some of them seven centuries old, have been destroyed or seriously damaged by Albanians. While a few of the most important churches still survive, such as Decani Monastery in western Kosovo and Gracanica Monastery near Pristina, they only continue to do so because they are under the constant armed protection of NATO soldiers. Without this protection, recent history indicates, they may well have been destroyed by now.

While this armed deterrent is thus indispensable, the very fact that such widespread damage has occurred indicates a rather mixed legacy for NATO in Kosovo. Since the installation of the UN regime in August 1999, Mnemosyne’s research teams, sometimes accompanied by foreign experts, have gone into the field several times to conduct research on medieval churches- before, and sadly sometimes after, they’ve been destroyed. In all cases, they have required NATO protection to ensure that they will not come under attack by local Albanians. Former UNMIK chief Michael Steiner’s golden rule for Kosovo – ‘standards before status’ – has been conveniently forgotten in the Great Powers’ rush to reach greater geopolitical solutions.

Queen Sophia of

Spain, right, presents Mirjana Menkovic with Mnemosyne’s 2006 heritage protection award from Europa Nostra

Creating a Nation

The international community, in other words, has tolerated and now seems to be rewarding the kind of deliberate cultural eradication from Kosovo’s Muslim Albanians as was previously practiced by

Afghanistan’s former Taliban regime, when it blew up the Bamiyan Buddha, so as to remove any tangible traces of the country’s ancient Buddhist identity. In Kosovo as well, attests Menkovic, churches have not just been toppled: in some cases, they have been completely obliterated, with all traces of their existence thus vanishing. The purpose, she attests, is the denial of historical existence; this is politically useful too, as it expedites the denial of any Serbian right to the land. Once a church has been destroyed, she says, the Albanians “remove all the stones to use for their own building works, and either use the site to dump their garbage, or smooth over the land so that you would never know anything had been there.”

http://http://www.balkanalysis.com/2008/01/05/against-the-odds-a-serbian-institute-protects-world-heritage-in-kosovo/

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Neue Ausgrabungen aus der Antike bei Skopje

28.1.2008 by admin.

Promising Projects for Macedonian Archaeology in 2008

1/20/2008 (Balkanalysis.com)

By Christopher Deliso

Both tourists and academic experts will want to take note of some intriguing developments in the upper

Mediterranean this year. According to Pasko Kuzman, archaeologist and Director of Cultural Heritage Protection in the Macedonian Ministry of Culture, 2008 will be an exciting year for the continued unearthing of unknown treasures from several sites around the country. Among the government’s main priorities are some projects already in progress, and others that will be completely new.

The first major project will be the continuation of excavations on Skopje’s Kale- the highest point of the city over the

Vardar, where medieval castle walls guard the river. In 2007, preliminary digs here resulted in the discovery of many fascinating artifacts dating from prehistoric to Ottoman times, which are now on display in the Museum of the City of

Skopje. Among the finds are a coin of Alexander the Great, and numerous ones from Roman, Byzantine and medieval Bulgarian rulers. Around 30 lead seals from the Byzantine period – items which have been an invaluable aid to scholars reconstructing Byzantine history in Turkey and

Bulgaria, among other places – were also discovered in the soil beneath the ruined castle.

Skeletal remains of medieval inhabitants were among the finds at

Skopje’s castle, Kale, in autumn 2007

Balkananaylse

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Macedonia: No New Church without a Mosque

28.1.2008 by admin.

No New Church without a Mosque, Macedonian Officials Warned

1/27/2008 (Balkanalysis.com)

When government officials in

Macedonia recently proposed rebuilding a church that once stood on the city’s central square, they received an abrupt warning: for the Islamic Community (IVZ), the recreation of Sveti Konstanin & Elena, destroyed in the 1963 earthquake, should guarantee them their own right to build a mosque in the prominent downtown area.

According to a report from A1 Television, among its other ambitions the IVZ is most keen on rebuilding the Burmali Mosque, destroyed in 1925, a year after the official dissolution of the Ottoman Empire but 12 years after the Ottomans were finally expelled, following a long period of bloody crackdowns on the Christian populations of

Macedonia. A Royalist Yugoslav army house was built over it. Today the area is near a pedestrianized street where modern cafés cater to locals and international guests, considered to be one of the nicest modernization efforts in the city in recent years. Resurrecting a mosque in the area would certainly change the ambience.

Interestingly, it appears that the whole building frenzy is part of the larger issue of creating an “urban plan” for

Skopje. The government has announced it will put forward an international tender for coming up with a “solution” to this issue, which it says will involve architects, planners and officials from the Ministry of Culture. However, the religious dimensions of the urban upgrade means that the authorities are playing with fire. While building an Orthodox Church is largely an exercise in decoration in a country where few attend church regularly, building a mosque, frequented five times a day by groups of Muslims likely to be “commuting” across the bridge from the “other” side of the river, is not. Considering current demographic and social trends, such religious one-upsmanship cannot lead to a long-term victory, to put it mildly, for Christendom in

Macedonia.

This is not the first time that Muslim officials have raised their voices on this issue; it has been a hot topic for several years now. And in interviews and public statements, the ambitions of the Islamic leadership to restore the Ottoman-era landscape have been clearly seen.

 Balkananaylse

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Slovenia centre of Kosovo status issue scandal

28.1.2008 by admin.

Die Slowenische Zeitung Dnevik veröfftentlichte ein Dokument, welches von US Assistent Secretary Daniel Fried unterschrieben ist, welches praktisch den Befehl gibt, das Slowenien als derzeitiger EU Rats Präsident, zu erst den Kosovo anerkennt.

Mit dieser Art von Völkerrechtswidriger Erpressung, wollten die USA eine Lawine von weiteren Anerkennungen des Kosovo als Republik los treten.
Slovenia centre of Kosovo status issue scandal
27/01/2008

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia — Slovenia found itself in a bind on Friday (January 25th), when Ljubljana-based newspaper Dnevnik published a document in which US Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried suggested that current EU presidency holder Slovenia should be “among the first EU members to recognise the independence of Kosovo”. The document is transcript of a conversation between Washington and Slovenian diplomats on December 24th 2007. The US embassy in Ljubljana refused to comment on the authenticity of the diplomatic memoranda. (Makfax, A1, Beta, AP, Reuters - 26/01/08)
Setimes

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