SEIZURE OF SERB CHURCH PROPERTY FORM OF CULTURICIDE

BELGRADE, JULY 23 /SRNA/ – Theologian Nebojša Lazić told SRNA that the systematic and deliberate seizure of church property and destruction of Serb religious sites and cemeteries in the FBiH represents culturicide aimed at erasing the historical continuity of Serb people’s existence and identity.

Lazić said that Serbs in the FBiH have long been a “statistical error” and that attacks on their property and vandalism of gravestones represent a continuation of the erasure of Serb history and tradition. “This represents a continuation of erasing everything that defined the homes and heritage of those people who fled during the last Defensive-Patriotic War and left their ancestral homes,” Lazić said, adding that Serbs in the FBiH gather around their religious sites especially during major holidays and annual vacations. Lazić stressed that the systematic and deliberate seizure of church property is an attempt to destroy the historical continuity of the existence of Serbs, and ultimately to demoralise them so that they no longer visit, look after, or maintain any kind of memory and remembrance. “This is an attempt to erase everything with Serb prefix and to settle accounts with both the dead and the living Serbs, because the dead Serbs also lived there for centuries and were benefactors who endowed these places,” Lazić said. He noted that church land is being particularly targeted because it belonged to people who were benefactors and who donated it to churches so that the Serb people would have places and communities around which to gather. Lazić pointed out that unity is a characteristic of Serb identity, and that the “four ire steels” symbol around the cross was not placed there by chance, as it represents the saying “Only unity saves the Serbs”, while the cross represents those churches and temples. “That is the consecrated church land where we gathered, for which we were killed during the First and Second World Wars and during Ottoman rule, but we endured there. Now, when peaceful times have come, times of so-called democracy, they are trying, through paperwork, to legalise the erasure and culturicide of the Serb people,” he added. According to Lazić, all of this is being done with the aim of dehumanising and labelling the Serb people as criminal and “genocidal”. “Although we survived genocide, they tried to place that shameful label on us, and when someone is labelled in such a way, it then creates a moral and ethical justification for taking property and seizing religious sites,” Lazić said. He added that this is nothing new, recalling that Serb religious sites and temples are also being seized in Kosovo and Metohija and cemeteries destroyed, just as cemeteries in the FBiH are being destroyed.