“Serbs in Kosovo suffer like no other nation in Europe”

TANJUG
13/4/2011

MOSCOW — There is no other nation that is suffering as much as Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija are now, Serbian Orthodox Church Partiarch Irinej told a Russian website.

Irinej said that Serbs in Kosovo live in constant fear and that many have laid down their lives for the right to stay on their homesteads at the time when European forces came to stabilize the situation in Kosovo and protect the local population, the Department for External Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church posted on its website.

“Many more people were killed in this period than before the peacekeeping forces arrived, and this is a tragedy,” Irinej said and added that chaos dominates in the territory of Kosovo.

According to the patriarch, a great number of people want to return to Kosovo but cannot go back because of the lack of stability and normal living conditions.

Maybe some better, safer times would come when many people would be able to return, Irinej said.

Speaking about the relations between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church and the ties between the two nations, the patriarch said that Serbia and Russia have always shared strong and sincere bonds of friendship, both in distant history and now.

“We speak similar languages, and we share the same Orthodox Church, and Serbia, as a less populous nation and a Church with a smaller number of believers, has always looked upon Russia as its own kin and considered the Russian Orthodox Church as their own,” Irinej said.

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