At 3.30 a.m. on 22 October, three youths spray-painted the slogan "Serbia is Orthodox; we are the people of St Sava" and a quotation from the New Testament: "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves" on the front wall of the home of Jan Demiter, pastor of the Pentecostal church in Backa Palanka (Vojvodina), which also houses the Christian Center. When the pastor tried to persuade the young men to desist, they told him his house and Vojvodina "are Serbian." One of the youths threatened to kill the pastor, throw a grenade into his home and drive his family out of Serbia, and attempted to spray him with paint. Mrs Demiter called the police, who soon apprehended the youths, took them to the police station, and allowed them to go an hour later. The youths then returned to the pastor's home, broke the front door and threw a brick through the window. The Demiter family recognized them as the same young men who had stoned a bus carrying members of the Christian Center to a religious conference in July.
That same night, the facade of the Adventist church in Backa Palanka was also spray-painted with insulting and nationalistic slogans, such as "This is Serbia and it belongs to the Serbs." Threatening slogans appeared on this church in July too.
Small religious communities are presented in Serbia as subversive and Satanist cults, and their buildings are frequent targets of attacks. The Adventist church in the Belgrade suburb of Borca was broken into three times in March. The windows of the Evangelical church in Subotica (Vojvodina) were shattered on 6 April and, on 9 April, the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs banned the import of Jehovah's Witnesses literature. The Baptist church in Novi Sad (Vojvodina) was stoned on the night of 18/19 April. Posters announcing a discussion forum on the introduction of religious instruction in schools, whose participants were members of members of small denominations, were pasted over with labels reading "Sect." The Evangelical-Methodist church in Vrbas (Vojvodina) was stoned on 9 July. Muslim and Jewish cemeteries, mosques and synagogues in Belgrade and Zrenjanin (Vojvodina) were vandalized in February, March and June. Members of the Obraz and the Ravna Gora movements disrupted a meeting on anti-Semitism in Cacak (central Serbia) on 3 August, and stones were thrown at the home of an Adventist preacher in this city on the night of 19/20 October.
It is the duty of the state to prevent all actions by individuals or groups that incite ethnic, racial or religious hate, and to punish acts of violence and intimidation motivated by religious intolerance. Government agencies must make possible the expression of different religious beliefs, and prosecute those who attack believers, their churches and other religious facilities.
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Serbia: Low religious education enrolment sparks bias accusations
Keston Institute (12.10.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (15.10.2001) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - After enrolment began in Serbian schools for newly-instituted religious education classes, the Orthodox Synod and the Catholic Bishops' Conference fiercely attacked the education ministry for 'antidemocratic and illegal behaviour' by the minister and his close associates 'against the basic democratic principle of equal treatment of religious education and the alternative subject, "civic education".' As preliminary results showed that few pupils had opted for religious classes, the Synod complained that parents had not been offered a fair choice. The Catholic bishops called for the enrolment period to be extended. However, Serbia's education minister Gaso Knezevic denied to Keston News Service any accusations of bias, insisting that school principals had been instructed to be 'visibly neutral'.
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Serbian Evangelical Churches Stoned, Vandalized
Persecution from Orthodox extremists on rise since Milosevic forced from office
By Branko Bjelajac in Belgrade
Christianity Today (06.08.2001)/
The months following Yugoslavia's largely peaceful political revolution have been anything but tranquil for the Protestant-Evangelical Church in Leskovac. Evangelicals have been assaulted and beaten, and the meeting places of Serbian and Romani (Gypsy) Christian fellowship groups have been stoned and vandalized.
"The city planning officials are against us," says Stefan Stankovic, a church elder and a Serb, referring to municipal efforts to tear down a tent in which 1,000 Romani Christians meet for worship. "Our offices have been broken into and burglarized. They are even cutting our phone lines. There is no end to intimidation."
This church, with 200 people in its Serb fellowship, is in a city of 80,000 about 30 miles from the southern border with Kosovo, where rebels continue to push for full independence. But its experience is not unique.
Since Vojislav Kostunica became president and former leader Slobodan Milosevic was forced from office last October, Serbian media, Serbian nationalists, and some Orthodox extremists have begun publicly labeling evangelicals as religious heretics, traitors, and evil sects "imported from the West." This campaign has coincided with a sharp increase in violent incidents against non-Orthodox churches. Amid Slobodan Milosevic's extradition on war crimes charges, evangelicals hope the fear of prosecution will curb fresh attacks on religious minorities.
According to Operation World, Orthodox Christians account for 67 percent of the population in Yugoslavia. The nation consists of Serbia-where 94 percent of the country's people live-and the small but fractious province of Montenegro. There are 10.6 million citizens in Serbia, only 8,000 of whom (or.075 percent of the total population) are evangelicals, meeting in 200 local fellowships. The first Baptist church in Novi Sad, now the capital of Serbia's northern province of Vojvodina, was founded in 1892.
"Baptists, Pentecostals, and others are dangerous religious cults who damage physical and psychological development of your children," said Zoran Lukovic, a police inspector, in a Ministry of Education-sponsored lecture to elementary and high school teachers in Belgrade. "They also destroy families." In his book Religious Cults, endorsed by the Ministry of Police, Lukovic links evangelicals with fringe groups, calling them all "wolves in sheep's clothing."
The Social Democratic Union (SDU), a member of the ruling coalition, has so far been alone in defending evangelicals, accusing elements of the former government of encouraging the violence. After the Baptist church in Novi Sad was pelted with rocks twice in one week in April because the pastor appeared on a public religious education panel, the SDU said in a statement, "It is obvious that persecution against so-called sects is on [the] increase.. Some members of the Socialist Party of Serbia, who are insisting on a fight against sects, are spreading religious intolerance."
The socialists, however, deny any involvement. Branislav Ivkovic, Socialist Party vice president, told Christianity Today, "The Socialist Party has nothing to do with these people of.. darkened mind who object to others being of a different religion.. The increase is happening today, after seven months with the new government."
The lynch-mob mentality is spreading to neighboring Bosnia as well. The Protestant-Evangelical Church in Bijeljina was recently stoned after a series of threats. Some people disturbed church services, says Vukasin Vukovic, a ruling elder of the congregation.
"We are facing the most difficult period in our 50 years of existence," Vukovic says. "We were not persecuted this much even under the communists."
