Episcopal Press and News
Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Argues that Coverage of Balkan Violence Is One-sided
Episcopal News Service. October 15, 1992 [92209]
In the face of mounting criticism by the world community, a delegation of Serbian Orthodox clergy visited the United States and Canada, to supply a Serbian perspective on the flood of news from the region.
Patriarch Pavle of Belgrade, the 78-year-old leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church and a small delegation of clergy met with officials of the government, the United Nations and churches, including the Episcopal Church, to tell them that evil exists on all three sides of the war. Pavle is the spiritual leader of about 12 million Serbian Orthodox Christians worldwide, including nearly two million in the United States.
"Everyone is guilty to the same extent," said Pavle. "There are crimes and atrocities on each side -- and irrational hatreds -- but the crimes are said to be only those of the Serbians."
Though Pavle has called for the resignation of Serbian President Slobodan Miloslovic and has demonstrated in peace marches through the streets of Belgrade, he is nonetheless a tireless proponent of the Serbian point of view on the recent ethnic wars, a perspective that he says is missing in Western media. "I am here to speak of the great suffering of the Serbian peoples," he told an audience in Canada, referring to the Serbs who live in Croatia or Bosnia-Herzegovina. "Their suffering is trivialized by world leaders and ignored by the media, and it is perpetuated by the one-sided sanctions aimed to starve Serbia and the 500,000 Serbian, Croatian and Muslim refugees it shelters and protects."
Pavle used his nine-city tour to advance several themes crucial for the Serbians: Muslim and Croatian violence against Serbians in World War II, the false brotherhood imposed on the ethnic groups during Tito's communist regime in Yugoslavia, the one-sided coverage of the recent violence by Western media and the danger of the economic embargo on Serbia and Montenegro, a region that has remained closely allied with Serbia.
"The rivalry between Roman Catholic Croats, Muslim Bosnians and Serbian Orthodox is an ancient one that was carefully suppressed by the communist regime for the last 45 years," said Pavle at a meeting with Roman Catholic, Muslim and Jewish leaders in New York. "Now that the door to freedom has been opened, old hatreds have come back to the surface. Communism was a false solution to the divisions in our region and now we reap the harvest of seeds that were sown 45 years ago."
The Serbian military, which inherited the spoils of the Yugoslavian military, is by far the strongest force in the region and it has been engaged in a campaign against the breakaway republics of Croatia and BosniaHerzegovina for more than a year. Reports of Serbian air raids that laid to waste entire cities and reports of "ethnic cleansing," the mass extermination of Roman Catholics and Muslims, have been common in Western media.
During his trip, Pavle met for an hour with leaders of the Episcopal Church. According to the Rt. Rev. Paul Reeves, Anglican observer at the United Nations, the patriarch went into an explanation of Croatian and Bosnian atrocities in World War II and then complained that a $35,000 relief package from the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief was going only to Muslims in the region.
There is no direct ecumenical dialogue between the Episcopal Church and the Serbian Orthodox Church, according to the Rev. William Norgren, ecumenical officer for the Episcopal Church, but there is an international Anglican-Orthodox dialogue that includes the Serbs. Though that body has not addressed the issue of the crisis in the Balkans, he said, the violence is assuredly the business of the whole Christian community.
Norgren described the animosity between the Serbian Orthodox and the Roman Catholics and the Serbian Orthodox and the Muslims as one that dates back to the Middle Ages, a conflict between the Byzantine Empire in the east and Roman Empire in the west, and between Christians in the Balkans and the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
Like the patriarch, Norgren resisted blaming the Serbians alone, but he admitted that "it will take a long time to sort this out. Their memory goes back a long way."
The patriarch not only opposed military intervention, but he also denounced the economic embargo of his country. "The very people you wish to bring to their knees with sanctions will emerge in the spring from their warm homes unscathed," he said. "The victims of your sanctions are the Serbian people, who have endlessly marched for peace, for justice and for change. Moreover, the victims of your sanctions are the opposition parties. Not only will your sanctions not bring peace, but they will perpetuate the very regime you wish to starve into exile."