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“These days foreigners, Albanians, Serbs come. They go up to the church and take pictures of our remains … They look, they write something, we also look, and we know everything: who owns the Church of San Juan and whose sign they put, which says ‘our church’ in Albanian and English . “Says Aleksandar Stević, a history teacher at the” Spanish Legion “school in the town of Suvo Grlo. How did the junta get to the hammer called Đutek, what did the Spanish legionaries do to deserve a name in this ghetto? turned into a sign and a message? What is this latest “Kisha Jone / Our church” and to whom is it addressed?
Thanks to him, different people came to this completely isolated village and the remains of the church, in the municipality of Srbica in Drenica. They come in the middle of a corona virus pandemic. Someone placed a board over the remains of the Serbian church, clearly indicating that it was not a Serbian church, but an Albanian one.
“This is something new, they haven’t done it before,” says historian Stevic. And the journey through the history of Suvo Grlo begins with the mention of this place in the letters that King Milutin issued in the 13th and 14th centuries to the monasteries of Saint Nicholas near Priboj and to the Banjska monastery near Zvečan. Following these and other signs, Milan Ivanović counted nine churches and the remains of the city or fortifications on it in this town. During the Turkish rule and the settlement of the Albanians, the churches were abandoned and collapsed, and he testified that they were in Albanian courtyards and walls in the last decades of the last century. Some did not touch, they were careful not to make mistakes, especially not to cut the wood of the disc.
Today the situation is completely different. Unknown persons mark the territory and the foundations of the temple with posters that are used in front of the Catholic temples in Albania and Kosovo, although the Serbian population lives there, around these remains of shrines. Its legend says that the town was called Srma Grlo (Silver Throat), and that later it was called Suvo Grlo, that the churches themselves moved and flew from one place to another, hiding and seeking protection. It is the same path of the dependent Serbian peasants who were owned by Turkish masters. Thus, Stojan Novaković points out that at the end of the 19th century, these villages (čifluci) often “moved” according to the wishes of their owners.
Persistent, natural and tenacious faith, trust in the sanctuaries and the experience of suffering saved three villages in this area in the fatal events of 1999. Everything around the villages of Suvo Grlo, Banje and Crkolez was practically annihilated, the churches destroyed, Serbs expelled, properties burned and usurped. Serbian institutions are moving from Skenderaj to Suvo Grlo and Banje, and life is turning into a prison from which the French KFOR trucks can emerge. On carbide benches, under the canvas of a truck, from here to Kosovska Mitrovica, elderly people, children, the sick, pregnant women, teachers travel … This trip is a symbol of a reduced life that decided to preserve its villages, old houses, speaks authentic and sanctuaries. . The Tomašević, in the midst of this chaos, are “founding” a small radio station, called Three Hearts. OSCE Officer J. METRO. It is suspicious, because this name is reminiscent of the Serbian sign of the three fingers, and is, in fact, the three remaining peoples. They put on a radio signal and only they listen to it, to have a song and a voice about themselves. Each arrival of one side here is at the same time a joy that leads to the collapse of emotions. When famous basketball players Vlade Divac and Dragan Tarlać brought gifts for children in 2008, a girl said that she was very happy and then began to cry bitterly and unstoppably. In 2008, it was an “Print of the Week”.
What else can someone take away from these people and why is it necessary to appropriate the stones on which the locals light candles and put water to stop the feast of Epiphany?
The new process of transforming Serbian cultural heritage into “our” and Kosovo’s common treasure began to be actively implemented after the pogrom of March 17, 2004. Precisely led, well organized and encouraged by the institutions, the mass dealt a terrible blow to the Serbian Orthodox Church, the heritage and the people. All the surveys conducted among Albanians before the pogrom show that the absolute majority of the churches and monasteries are considered to be the heritage and property of Serbia. After the pogrom, it was realized that there could currently be no “definitive solution” to the disappearance of Serbian heritage, so various activities were undertaken on the ground to change the consciousness of the Albanian population and adopt a new narrative on Albanian churches. and the cultural heritage of Kosovo. Projects, media content, tribunes, university professors and local parahistorians, victims of the conflict, school system, representatives of the Catholic Church, extreme imams, create a new awareness of the stolen treasure of Albanians ranging from Visoki Decani to the remains of this small Church of San Juan in Suvo Grlo. After less than fifteen years of campaigning, the absolute majority of Albanians believe in these fabrications. The new reality on the ground finds its theoretical basis in the “civic concept” of Kosovo’s heritage and cultural heritage, which must be taken up by the Kosovo administration with its services. The fact is that there is Serbian, Ottoman (Turkish) and Albanian cultural heritage in Kosovo, and the Kosovo administration is trying to shape “state” heritage and property according to the model of taking over the Milo Djukanovic shrines. . Serbs are perceived as a long-lost people and all possible obstacles are placed in front of them so as not to go to their temples in Gjakova, Petrich, Studenica Hvostanska … The board with the inscription “our church” over the town of Suvo Grlo is a message of that new change of consciousness and the annulment of a people. Serbian children and teachers were expelled from the Suvo Grlo joint school. It was built in 1926 by the teacher Tadiša Rakočević with the peasants and was the first elementary school in Drenica county, they received the Order of Saint Sava. In 1999, his successors were transferred from the institution and transferred, a little further, to a school called “Spanish Legion”, built by legionaries from the Iberian Peninsula. After the “liberation” of the Serbs, the school was given the name “Shota Galica” in honor of a warrior, the wife of Azem Bejta, an outlaw and leader of the Kacak. However, that new name was not enough for life, the school was left without Albanian students. The last ones moved this year, most fled to the West.
Does this emptiness give rise to new frustrations?
Serbian culture, spirituality and state face a broad new action that will undermine the more secure support of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija. “We can only hope that some official voice of reason will be heard, that this is not the way to reconciliation, but from what I can see, even those who can say something are silent,” said the abbot of the Visoki Decani monastery, Archimandrite. Sava Janjic.
The “theoretical” preparation has been giving dangerous results for several years in the depths of the territory: hermitages, new and old cemeteries, towers, cave churches, churches in Albanian villages are becoming the subject of publications on social networks, portals and media. Everyone had the opportunity to show the Albanian treasure that the Serbs stole. That possibility is an open invitation to the individual to take matters into his own hands. Recently, a young man, respecting that national impulse, entered the Gracanica monastery and, in a video direction, accused the Serbs of kidnapping the church from the Albanians at the south gate.
In less than fifteen years, the path from destruction to appropriation has been traveled. Life here has had its own internal patterns, paths, and symbols for centuries. They have crossed the border of the ghetto, so the “rest of the sanctuary” is the last place we can take, rename and desecrate.
Yesterday someone removed the “Kisha Jone / Our Church” sign from the church. Then the Albanians gathered and protested and the false sign became a symbol, even a sacrifice.
At the end of the day, Professor Aleksandar Stević lit a candle near the remains of the sanctuary, can it be a symbol of renewal and normality?
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