Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Serbia-Montenegro union, now a writer, Vuk Drašković, has said that Serbia’s blocking of Kosovo from joining UNESCO was based on hatred and untruths.
In an editorial published in the independent Serbian daily “Danas”, he said that Serbia has achieved “two virtual victories” in foreign policy, such as Kosovo’s ban from UNESCO and Russia’s veto in the UN Security Council on the International Court of Justice’s decision on the Srebrenica genocide.
However, he says that in reality, both of these are huge losses for Serbia.
“Today Serbia cannot protect its heritage in Kosovo, but Serbian churches and monasteries cannot be protected either by Albanians, their special police unit, whose commander is a Serb. This is the essence of the ‘winning’ campaign against Kosovo’s admission to UNESCO. So, who will take care of Serbian heritage? Nobody!
The campaign of the Serbian state against Kosovo’s membership in UNESCO, which would have made Kosovo take on the strictest international obligations to protect the religious, historical and cultural heritage of everyone on its territory and above all the Serbian heritage, was warmongering, based on hatred, untruths and half-truths,” Drašković said in this editorial, transmitted by Klankosova.tv.
Furthermore, he also mentions the labels that his country’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, gives to Kosovo Albanians, whom, according to him, he calls “damned”, but also those of Serbia’s Foreign Minister, Ivica Dačić, who says that “Kosovo is like ISIS”.
According to him, these statements by the heads of the Serbian state, but also others, that “Albanians want to appropriate, to declare ‘Serbian holy places’ as Albanian”, are lies which “served to incite anti-Albanian hatred and hysteria”.
Drashkovic further says that with the March 2004 riots in Kosovo, Serbia wanted to send the message that “Kosovo Albanians are, so to speak, genetically, ‘destroyers of Serbian sanctuaries’ and which they cannot protect.”
However, he says that many Albanians are descendants of these monasteries that Serbia considers its own.
“This is said and written, despite the fact that tens of thousands of Albanians are descendants of the ‘monastery voivodes’, whose families and tribal clans, for more than four centuries, protected Serbian churches and monasteries, and even lost their lives in their defense.”
“According to the Kanun of Leka Dukagjini, churches must be protected, because, as the Kanun says, ‘they have neither sword nor rope’! Immediately after the First Balkan War and the liberation of Kosovo, the Kingdom of Serbia, with its highest decorations, adorned the chests of those Albanian voivodes of the monastery. Serbia’s campaign at UNESCO offended their descendants. They remember far and wide,” said Drashkovic.
Meanwhile, he says that another film “about the demolition and burning of more than 200 mosques, tekkes and madrasas in Kosovo in April and May 1999 was hidden from the world, but also from Serbia.”
“If that film had been shown, it would have been known that the Islamic heritage was destroyed by the Milosevic state, its military, police and paramilitary forces, and that, five years later, Kosovo extremists barbarically attacked Serbian churches and monasteries. It is dishonest to anathematize only someone else’s crime, but to remain silent about one’s own.
The claims that there is no Albanian heritage in Kosovo, that the Albanians there are spiritually sterile, that all their mosques were built by the Turks and that they did not even build a fountain, are close to Nazism,” emphasized Serbian writer Vuk Drašković.
Meanwhile, speaking about the British resolution in the UN Security Council on the Serbian genocide in Srebrenica, he said that Russia’s veto on it “is a defeat, not a great victory for Serbia.”
“By asking Russia to ‘protect the Serbian people from the stamp of genocide’ with its veto, the Serbian president, whether he wanted to or not, identified the entire Serbian people with the perpetrators of the great crime in Srebrenica.”
Both the Russian veto of Srebrenica and the vote for Kosovo’s membership in UNESCO, Draskovic says, brought Serbia into conflict with the vast majority of EU members, with all the powerful countries of the West, and with all the countries in its vicinity.
“It is a defeat and even a great defeat for a country that is a candidate for membership in the European Union, not Eurasian or African, and that has the ambition to be a pillar of stability and reconciliation in the Balkans torn by still unhealed wounds of war and unquenched hatred.”
“Victory, which is defeat, hinders even the best political moves strategically: the Brussels Agreement, the rapprochement of Serbia and Albania, Serbia and BiH, visits to Srebrenica and sending mail to the victims of the Srebrenica genocide, as written on the white obelisk in the cemetery there.”
“Let’s imagine that Serbia respected its obligation from the Brussels Agreement, not to hinder the international integration of Kosovo. And that Serbia supported the British resolution in the UN Security Council, that it took the example of Germany, which was the first and most fervent to condemn the Holocaust and every crime committed by the Nazis. What would happen? Serbia would be exalted before Europe and the whole world. It would truly achieve two great victories,” he said.
Meanwhile, regarding the “victories” that Serbia considers as such, while Drashkovic considers them as defeats, he says that they have had the effect that “Serbo-Albanian relations have darkened, the Brussels agreement is in danger, everything is closed in Bosnia, due to the vote at UNESCO, Serbia’s relations with Montenegro and Macedonia have cooled, Kosovo Serbs are afraid that they will pay for anti-Albanian patriotism in Belgrade.”
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