Vulin banned from attending memorial service for slain Serbs

BELGRADE - Serbia's Minister without portfolio for Kosovo-Metohija Aleksandar Vulin has been banned from attending a memorial service for slain Kosovo Serbs that will be held at the St. Nicholas Church in Pristina to mark the tenth anniversary of the March Pogrom, the Serbian government Office for Kosovo-Metohija said on Sunday.

"The latest ban shows that Pristina wants to impose a ban on reminding the world of the unpunished atrocities and crimes against the Serbs," the office said in a statement.

The tenth anniversary of the pogrom will be commemorated by the Kosovo-Metohija Serbs with or without Minister Vulin, and Serbia will on March 17 remind the world of the crimes committed amid international presence in Kosovo-Metohija, just as it will seek that murderers and those who torched houses finally be brought to justice, the statement said.

In the night between March 17 and 18, 2004, ethnic Albanian terrorists razed or torched 439 Serb homes and 35 Orthodox churches and monasteries in Kosovo-Metohija, with 28 people killed and around 4,000 Serbs driven out of the province.

The St. Nicholas Church in Pristina, one of the holy sites razed in 2004, was renovated in 2009.

A total of 45,000 Serbs lived in Pristina before the arrival of KFOR.

All of them moved out of the city after the pogrom.

The Office for Kosovo-Metohija urged UNMIK and EULEX to not only condemn the most recent ban but also do everything in their power to stop the policy of violence and bans.

Photo Tanjug/F. Kraincanic (archive)