Father Sava Janjic: Secret talks held on ethnic separation in Kosovo (NIN, TV N1, BETA)
Abbot of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) Visoki Decani Monastery Father Sava Janjic said on Thursday he had “pretty reliable information from both local and foreign sources about talks on the division of Kosovo along ethnic lines, adding the negotiations were held in a narrow circle and in the greatest secrecy, Beta news agency reports.
In an interview for Belgrade-based weekly magazine NIN, Father Sava said the negotiations on division along the ethnic lines included some “cosmetic elements” for protection of the remaining Serb population “which will stay on the ‘other side of the border’.”
According to him, “the aim is to let Kosovo into the UN after which there won’t be a problem to establish a link between Pristina and Tirana,” while “Serbia wouldn’t even have to recognize Kosovo” as an independent state.
“The demarcation will be with Albania, as the President talked about “the separation between the Serbs and the Albanians,” Janjic said.
He added that “the separation is just a hypocritical euphemism for an ethnic and territorial division of Serbia as “’the final solution’ was the Nazi's term for the elimination of the Jews in Germany.”
“The demarcation practically means leaving 80,000 Serbs with a low and uncertain level of protection, only for their alleged EU integration which, according to well informed (people) has never been further away from Serbia,” Janjic said.
He added “democracy is always at risk since when in the hands of oligarchs without any moral scruples it can turn into an open dictatorship.”
Concerning the media situation in Serbia, Father Sava noted “it is difficult to speak about a professional journalism today.”
“The society in which there is no serious investigative journalism, criticism, and even a healthy political lampoon, is destined to languish in the sphere of immoral tabloids which use political gossips, bizarre information and open pornography to delude people, making them a passive mass easy to manipulate with,” Janjic said.
He added the atmosphere of fear from public lynch, open threats and insults to journalists is a part of political ‘culture’ seen everywhere.”
“Speaking about Serbia’s European orientation with such attitude toward media is absurd,” Abbot Sava Janjic concluded.