Mitrovica memorial service: Increasingly more destroyed monuments and tombstones in the cemetery in South Mitrovica

Citizens of North Mitrovica visited the cemetery in South Mitrovica during the Mitrovica memorial service today, and they found a picture that gets worse year by year - there are more and more destroyed monuments, tombstones, and graves.

Although they have been finding destroyed and desecrated monuments and graves of their loved ones for more than two decades, citizens also say that vandals continue with increasing destruction of the cemetery every year to once again express their hatred towards everything Serbian.

Father Nenad Stojanovic says that every year, believers come to pay their respects to their deceased relatives, friends, and fellow citizens.

"Every year, here in the southern part, as a tradition, people come to visit their ancestors and pray to God for the repose of their souls. This cemetery is located in the southern part where there are no longer any Serbs, much of it has been destroyed, and monuments have been toppled, but we have the desire to come here regularly and visit our graves. We won't forget it. God willing, all people will be able to come and visit the graves of their loved ones", Stojanovic said.

One of the older residents of Mitrovica says that this is the true behavior of vandals.

"It's sad. Everything has been destroyed, and it's still being demolished even more. The Serbs don't destroy the Muslim cemetery in the northern part. Every year when we come, we always find more toppled monuments", he said.

He says that only inhumane people can do this.

"They are bothered by both the living and the dead; they want to expel both the living and the dead from Kosovo and Metohija, even though this is Serbian, Orthodox, and church land. Look at the cemetery and their behavior. Everything Serbian should be destroyed", he added.

Over the years of tombstones and monuments being destroyed, people have started to lose hope that the cemetery will be restored.

"I don't believe the cemetery will be restored. The municipality cleans the cemetery, but despite that, it remains uncleared, and many graves remain overgrown with weeds. My relatives on my mother's side are buried here. I will come here to pay my respects to them as long as I'm alive", a woman from Mitrovica said.

Among the Serbs, there is still a fear that this is not the end of desecration of graves.

"I'm afraid they will do the same as they did by the church there, and that this cemetery will end up like many others in southern Kosovo and Metohija. I don't believe in restoration. We have written many times, but nothing has happened," a woman from Mitrovica says as she lights candles for the souls of her loved ones.

It's a sad sight of people trying to lift and stand up marble slabs with their own hands so that the names of those who rest there can be seen amid the silence - that's what you see next to almost every grave.

With their own hands, they are trying to clean the faded letters and wonder once again who could have done this and whether, when they come next time, they will be able to find the grave of the deceased they are looking for.

"Sad, what else I can say. A normal person wouldn't do this... Not a single monument in the Albanian cemetery in the northern part has been touched. I doubt anyone will restore this in the foreseeable future", a resident of Mitrovica said, where more than 10 members of his family are buried in the cemetery in the southern part.