June 16, 1999
THE PRIESTS
Refuge for Kosovars in Serbian Monastery, After the Burning
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By STEVEN ERLANGER
ECANI, Yugoslavia -- As Serb forces withdrew from western
Kosovo, some of them burning and looting as they retreated, Father
Iguman and Father Sava moved among them, asking them to spare the
houses of their neighbors and bringing terrified Albanians here, to
this revered Serbian Orthodox monastery near Pec.
"They are the best people you can ever see," said Venera
Lokaj. "They are people of God. They heard Decani was burning, and
they came to search for people. They found us there in the open,
with everything burning, and they told us, 'We are blessed to see
you alive. Please be reasonable and come with us. Please come to
the monastery."'
Miss Lokaj is an Albanian, one of the 200 or so who have taken
refuge in this monastery, under cooling trees, retrieved from
misery by the fathers here.
She had lived in nearby Pec, which was destroyed by Serb forces
and paramilitaries in their rampage of revenge when NATO began
bombing Yugoslavia in March. She moved with her father, Nimon, to
Decani, because it had already been destroyed by Serbs the previous
summer. "I thought it would be safer," she said.
They were ordered to remain inside by the Serbs, and had little
chance to buy food in the destroyed town. But they were otherwise
left alone. "We stayed inside for two and a half months," she
said. "Until two days ago."
But after Belgrade capitulated and the Serb forces were given
six days to pull out of this region, "they got mad at
everything," Miss Lokaj said, "and they began to burn again."
The Serbs "took anything they wanted, and they started driving
people out of the center."
The Serbs arrived at their apartment building about 9 p.m. on
Saturday and set fire to the first floor, Miss Lokaj said. "We
were terrified and screamed at them from the balcony, 'We're here!'
They looked up, but didn't say anything."
They ran downstairs, leaving the canvasses of her father, a
well-known painter, to the flames. One Serb neighbor became angry,
but was ordered to be quiet, she said. So the the Lokajs and two
other families hid outside in the dark, fearing the Serbs would be
back to kill them.
Early the next morning, Father Iguman and Father Sava, the two
ranking monks here, found them and brought them to Decani. Father
Sava, a tall, slightly plump man of 33 with a curly tan beard and
eyeglasses, said he had only done what anyone would do. "We
offered them hospitality and I am very pleased they accepted," he
said in fluent English.
Last year, he said, the monastery was host to 50 Serb refugees
expelled from surrounding villages by the Kosovo Liberation Army,
and they remained here through the bombing by NATO, whose forces
here are known as KFOR. "But now, all of them became afraid and
left," Father Sava said sadly. "We begged them to stay and told
them that KFOR would protect them, but they said there was a vacuum
and they couldn't stay."
Of the 2,000 Serbs of Decani, he said, only about 10 remain.
"This is a biblical catastrophe, with the flight first of the
Albanian population and then the Serb population," Father Sava
said as he offered the monastery's home-made brandy, thick bread
and pepper spread.
Father Sava is not an overtly political person, but his views
are sharply expressed. "National traditions were misused by
irreligious and immoral people who don't care about God or
tradition at all," he said. "And people were pushed and forced to
believe in things that were wrong."
The church, he said, took a clear position against violence,
ethnic purging and for the democratization of both Serbia and
Albania, which was not the policy of the Yugoslav president,
Slobodan Milosevic.
In his view, NATO's bombing campaign, which the church opposed,
set off the very humanitarian disaster it was intended to prevent.
Father Sava had himself warned Secretary of State Madeleine K.
Albright in Washington in February what would happen to the Kosovo
Albanians if NATO bombed, he said. "I told her clearly what would
happen."
Bishop Artemija of Rasca and Prizren, the head of the Serbian
Orthodox Church, published an open letter calling the bombing a
mistake. "The bombs gave the pretext to the expulsion of a great
number of Albanians and gave the pretext to the exodus of the
Serbs," he said. "And democratic forces in Serbia are now almost
nonexistent, and President Milosevic is triumphant in his phantom
victory, and there is a lot of anti-Western feeling among Serbs
that will stop democratic processes in this area for a long time to
come."
Sincere diplomacy could have solved the problem without war,
Father Sava said, and if the unarmed monitors of the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe had remained in Kosovo, but
in larger numbers, "nothing like this would have happened." The
problems here "would not have been easy to resolve," Father Sava
said. "But it could have been done. And now we've ethnically
cleansed Kosovo and destroyed it and produced enormous suffering on
all sides."
Miss Lokaj had worked for the security organization in Pec. She,
too, speaks fluent English, and she, too, is very angry. "When the
OSCE left, they told us they would be back in two weeks and
everything would be the way we wanted it," she said bitterly. "We
hoped so, but after three days, everything changed. When NATO
started bombing, the police and the paramilitaries started
destroying everything that was Albanian."
The Serbs "made a war against civilians, against people with
empty hands," she said. "There was no KLA in Decani or in Pec,
and they had no right to do what they did. This is a catastrophe.
And the world saw this, it saw everything, and the world is too
late. I know the world felt it had the best intentions, but there
is a fatality about good intentions, and they always come too
late."
She turned away, brushing her brown hair from blazing eyes. "I
hate the words, 'I'm sorry,"' she said. "The world always says,
'I'm sorry,' and it's always too late. The British said, 'Be
patient. You have the sympathy of the world.' Well, the ground
burned under our feet, and the world says we have its sympathy."
Miss Lokaj stopped again, and then said, keeping her voice slow
and even: "Don't ever be sorry about the people who are still
alive. Just be sorry for the dead."
