Open Letter to Trent FRANKS (R.Az)

I love Peace

February 5, 2006
The Honorable Trent FRANKS (R.Az)U.S. House of Reprentatives1237 Longworth House Office BuildingWashington, D.C. 20515Fax: (202) 225.6328 Dear Congressman Franks: I have read with great dismay your “Interview” recently given to the American Legion Magazine, regarding “The Serbian Situation….”. I quote:
“…The Serbian situation is an example of the struggle between an ideology that affirms the sanctity of life and the tolerance of all religions, and an ideology that uses violence to force a majority on unwilling individuals. This is not unlike Israel’s struggle against those who seek religious fulfillment by massacring Jews…Much like Hezbollah, those who lay claim to Kosovo and neighboring lands have made clear their intent to create a religiously and ethnically pure Muslim Albanian state…”
As a student of Balkan affairs, I find your statements to be completely inaccurate, incendiary, and contrary to the interests of the local population, to the U.S.Government policies in the area, and to peace and political stability in the Balkans.
The religious connotation you give, and fully endorse, to the political issues regarding the sad state of affairs where Serbia finds itself today, cannot hide the terrible crimes perpetrated by the successive Serb governments, especially since 1912, and which culminated with the genocidal aggression of the war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, former President of Serbia. Since you have approached the “problem of Kosovo” from this vantage point, I would like to make the following clarifications:
The contents of your statements, as well as the tone, echo the declarations of His Grace Bishop Artemije of the Serb Orthodox Church in Kosova, clearly indicating His Grace’s “aloofness” for the fate of the e n t i r e unfortunate Kosova population –Moslem, Eastern Orthodox and Catholic. Sounding the alarm against “the militant Jihad and terrorism in the heart of Europe” the honorable Bishop neglects to explain why from 1389 to 1912, ALL major churches and objects of worship of the Serb Orthodox Church in Kosova were protected by the local Albanians, who by the end of the 17th century began their conversion to Islam.
The fear of having”…1.300 Serbian religious objects lost” is unfounded since the four centuries of Ottoman occupation, these “jewels of medieval architecture” have been protected and preserved by the local Moslem and Catholic population, often at the risk of their lives. As late as 1960 ,the late Patriarch of ther Serb Orthodox Church, Gherman, decorated the Albanian family Nikci, of Peje, for having protected the Patriarchate of Peje for generations. There was no complaint then against the Albanians, until ‘Serb politics’ fabricated the threat of annihilation of the Serb Orthodox Church. Spme of those responsible for these politics of division are now facing the
International Courtfor War Crimes in Yugoslavia, at the Hague (Netherland).
It is these “Serb politics’ that have mobilized the dark forces of the Serb Orthodox Church –including His Grace Bishop Artemije whom you met in Washington,D.C.—to declare that Kosova is”occupied” by Albanians (92 percent of the population) and that “…every state has the right to fight an occupier to liberate an occupied part of its terrirory…This is the only response worthy of the State, and the Serbian people”.
Who is the enenmy? It’s Islamic extremism among the Kosova Albanians, a theme incessantly repeated to intimidate the international community…and assiduously exploited to deceive American Christian believers.
The entire scenario turns uglier when one thinks of this “man of God”, Bishop Artemije, never raising the voice to protest the massacres of the marauding Serb “paramilitary gangs’ (Arkan,Franks etc.) as well as of the regular Serbian Army in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and finally in Kosova. His silence will forever remain a black stain in the history of his Church. There were few low-level Serb clergy who oppoesd the war and its destruction. “Our” Bishop was not one of them!
Historically, “…Serb nationalist doctrine emphasized the role of the Orthodox Church,- wrote Noel Malcolm, of the Oxford University and a Fellow of the British Academy- as an essential constituent of Serbian identity. Albanian nationalist doctrine, on the other hand, emphasized the Albanian language, accepting the religious diversity of the Albanians…Religion thus mattered, to a certain extent, in reality, because it mattered in Serbian national ideology”.
Andrew Herscher, of the University of Michigan, explains how”…recent studies of violence in anthropolgy, sociology, and political science have come to recognize the ‘ethnicity’ of violence is an abstracion, an interpretation and a staging; violence comes to be understood as ‘ethnic’ in narrations undertaken both by perpetrators and victims”. He states that”…representatives of both Albanian and Serb communities have inflicted violence against the other’s religious sites and have documented and memorialized violence against their own religious sites, in each case, in order to shape particular notions of ethnic identity- which means to be Albanian, or Serb, in Kosova”.
Writing about recent events, Professor Herscher had this to say:

“…During the counter-insurgency campaign waged by Serb forces against the Kosova Liberation Army in l998-l999, however, along with mass explusion of Albanians from Kosova, religious sites associated with Islam were targeted for destruction. Approxi-mately 200 of the more than 600 mosques in Kosova were damaged or destroyed during the 1998-1999, along with Sufi lodges and Islamic schools, archives and libraries … buildings were ruined by deliberately inflicting violence, including vandalism, arson, shelling or toppling of minarets, and the dynamiting of the building from within…” He concluded:
” Yet, the targeting of religious sites does not represent a history of “ethnic violence’ in Kosova, as mush as an ongoing attempt to inextricably enmesh ethnicity, religion, violence and history for contemporary political ends”.
It is these “political ends” that the Serbian lobby in Washington,D.C., is now serving by using the moral and political authority of the distinguished US. Congressmen.

The American scholar, Professor Serge R. Doucette,Jr. in an Essay: “Fourth of July and ’The Face of Terror’” wrote:
“…Serbia has in its recent history initiated five wars against its neighbors; all were justified by their goal of “Greater Serbia”, and all had the sanction and support of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Serbian Orthodox Church has consistently manipulated and distorted Christian faith in service of Serbian greed for territorial gain and power. There is no such thing as a minor or justified atrocity, or act of terrorism: but, as wrong as Palestinian suicide bombings are against the Israelis, and as immoral and cowardly as the acts of 9/11 were, they pale in comparison to the atrocities committed by the Serbs against ethnic Albanians.
… Serbian repetition of crimes against humaniy can be seen as a result of a Serbian “mentality” developed and fostered by a Mystical relationship with the Orthodox Churxh which is inseparable with the existentce of the Nation.
Since its inception in the later part of the 13th century, there has Never been a time in the history of the Serbian Orthodox Church that it has defended the Humanitarian Rights of anyone, but the Serbs themselves!
.. When you study Serbian history, you will come to undertsand that for Serbs, religion is not governing their daily ways of life, and they rarely attend church on a regular basis. Unlike Albanians, and others…they believe that if their “Church” is destroyed, they wil cease to exist. And, it is this belief that is effectively manipulated by Serbian religious and political leaders. The Serbian Orthodox Church becomes the motivation to sustain aggression, violence and atrocities against the others.”
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The painful history of Serb repression in Kosova, where the victims were the Albanians, is fully documented. I will submit only two documents dated in 1919 and in 1999:

1) Paris Peace Conference,1919,vol.XII,PPC, 184.018/ 3
The Secretary of State to Mr. A.J.Balfour (British Foreign Minister),Paris,April 18,1919

“…British Embassy at Washington has informed the Department of State as following regarding the alleged massacres of Albanians in Montenegro:” Gusinje, Plava, Ipek, Djakova, Podjour, and Roshji have been scenes of terrorism and murder by Serbian troops and Serbian agents whose policy appears to be the extermination of the Albanian inhabitants of the region…” Very truly yours, Robert Lansing, (Secretary of State)
2) Explaining the reason for NATO intervention , President W.J.Clinton had this to say:
“…We act to protect thousands of innocent people in Kosova from a mounting military offensive…Milosevic stripped Kosova of the constitutional autonomy its people enjoyed. Now, they started moving from village to village, shelling civilians and torching their bodies. We have seen innocent people taken from their homes, forced to kneel in the dirt, and sprayed with bullets. Kosovar men dragged from their families, fathers and their sons together, lined up and shot in cold blood. This is not war in the traditional sense. Its is an attack by tanks and artillery on a largely defenseless people, whose leaders have already agreed to peace. Ending this tragedy is a moral imperative…” (March 1999, Federal Document Clearing House)
(Research indicates that 174 Albanian families in Kosova were locked in their houses and burned alive by Serbian troops, men women and children!)

It is, therefore, utterly insane to think that “Moslem” Albanian demands for an indepen-dent Kosova would receive the favorable reception we witness today, if their aims were to build an “Islamic”,”terrorist” state, “to affirm…an ideology that uses violence …(with) the intent to create a religious and ethnically pure Muslim Albanian State…” The inter-national community that support Albanians in Kosova is predominantly Christian-not Moslem- from the U.S. of America to the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy , the European Union, the overwhelming academic world, intelectuals, analysts, diplomats, “think tanks”, and human rights organizations. The civilized world preseves intact the horrible images of the Serb aggression in Kosova during the 1998-1999 years- the long columns of refugees expelled…on foot, horse wagons, and especially the long trains reminiscent of the Nazi transportations convoys to the extermination camps during WW II. “This is another Holocaust in Europe, and we are not going to allow it” declared in 1999, Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Minister.
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Congressman Franks, in your interview, you made this unfortunate remark:…This Serbian situation is not unlike Israel’s struggle against those who seek religious fulfillment by massacring the Jews….”

The story of the Jews in Albanian lands is beginning to unfold: it’s a splendid example of religious tolerance, humanity and civil courage. Not one single, solitary, Jew was handed back to the Nazis. It’s a unique case in Europe. This is a fact now being corroborated by researches at the US.Holocaust Musem, in Washington,D.C., only a few steps from your Capitol office. Your distingusihed colleague at the House, the Honorable Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor of the U.S.House of Representatives can attest and confirm it for you. I will limit myself to the following excerpts from a statement by Mrs. Johanna <><>Neumann, of the US Holocaut Musem, made at the end of December 2006, during a Moslem-Jew joint appearance:
“…My parents and I spent the war years in Albania with Muslim families, various families, but in particular one family who actually saved our lives. My parents were imprisoned for about four days, and our wonderful friend, a gentleman by the name of Pilku – whose familiy is inscribed here at the Museum, as well as in Yad Vashem, as among The Righeous Among the Nations- was able to have them released after four days, saved my father by hiding him once the Germans occupied Albania, and my mother and I were introduced as family members of the household. And we were not touched.
The population in Albania was 85 percent Muslim, and 15 pervent of other religious orientations. Everybody knew who we were, and nobody would ever, or even had the thought of denouncing us. Not at all. As a matter of fact, when Germany occupied Yugoslavia, the Albanian people opened their borders, and allowed them (the Jews) to come in. And, when Germans demanded that these people be returned, for some reasons they knew exactly who it was who had crossed the border, they simply said:” We looked for Jews, we didn’t find any. We know only Albanians, We do not know any Jews”. And they had hidden them in the villages, in families, in hospitals that they declared were quarantined because of typhoid fever. Nobody was handed back over to Germans. And those people deserved every respect that anybody can give them. And these were our friends. The story is a long one but this is the essence of it. They saved us and these were good human beings, and as I said before, the majority of them were Muslims, and we have nothing but the highest respect for these people….”

Congressman Franks, I leave the final judgement to you, as I do hope that deep in your conscience you will take into serious consideration the information I suppied today.

Sincerely yours,

Sami Repishti, Ph.D.
City University of New York (retired)
Former political prisoners in Communist Albania (1946-56)
and Communist Yugoslavia (1960-61)
Human rights activist