"UNESCO should remove churches from list before takeover"

SPC monastery Visoki Decani Abbot Sava Janjic believes that UNESCO should remove Serbian Orthodox churches from its list if it lets "Kosovo take them over."
Source: B92 Friday, October 23, 2015 | 14:44

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"If UNESCO wants despite all to let Kosovo 'take over' Serbian Orthodox churches let them take us generously off World heritage list first," Janjic said on Twitter.
He believes the only way to move forward is to create a mechanism that would protect the Serb identity and rights in the territory of Kosovo.

"ONLY way forward is a Mechanism protecting our identity, rights etc in Kosovo. Right place is Brussels dialog. Without it UNESCO bid's absurd," he said in a another tweet.

The Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) abbot believes that a UNESCO status without a protection mechanism is no protection, but an even greater problem for the Serbian churches in Kosovo.

Janjic pointed out that his monastery "never did anything to harm anyone, and provided help to Albanians during the Kosovo conflict."

"We want to live in peace. We have come under attacked four times since the war, while NATO has been protecting us for 15 years," said Janjic.

The Visoki Decani abbot mentioned as examples of "the Kosovo reality" a number of photos of destruction of Serbian churches in Kosovo and thanked the troops of KFOR and NATO that protected those sites in previous years.

"Without them, all our churches would have been demolished," said Janjic.

After a former commander of a special unit of the French KFOR, Jacques Hogard, said that UNESCO should not allow Kosovo to join, the same position was expressed in a tweet reposted by Janjic of a former U.S. staff sargeant Anthony J. Pelliccio who added there were "many more" who shared his opinion.

Several days ago Sava Janjic spoke for B92 about the current situation and among other things said that allowing Kosovo to join UNESCO would be "very dangerous for our cultural heritage."

Bishop of Raska and Prizren Teodosije issued a statement recently on the same topic, and addressed Pristina's "rush" to join UNESCO:

"Regrettably, the rejection of dialog on Serbian Orthodox heritage in Brussels clearly demonstrates that their goal is to become a member of UNESCO as soon as possible so that they could use their status in this organization as a tool for further cultural repression against the SPC by once again tabling controversial laws on cultural heritage, under the UNESCO umbrella."