Rakocevic: UNESCO protection is important; establishing Kosovo's cultural heritage is not possible

It is very important to protect a civilization and its fundamental heritage at the international level and within UNESCO, and perhaps most importantly, we must constantly explain, both to ourselves and others, that there are three dominant cultural heritages here – Serbian, Ottoman, and Albanian – and that it is not possible to establish Kosovo’s cultural heritage, journalist and writer Zivojin Rakocevic says to Kosovo Online, commenting on the UNESCO World Heritage Committee's decision to keep four Serbian sacred sites in Kosovo on the List of World Heritage in Danger.

“You have thousands of churches, churchyards, monuments, and cemeteries disappearing because we can no longer access them, but this needs to be known somewhere, there must be testimony about it. While we are talking here, some special zone is being destroyed, a church property is being fenced off, and stones are being taken away. It is very important to protect a civilization at the international level and within UNESCO, to protect its fundamental heritage. In the end, perhaps the most important thing is to constantly explain, both to ourselves and to others, that there are three dominant cultural heritages here – Serbian, Ottoman, and Albanian – and that it is not possible to establish Kosovo’s cultural heritage, nor is it possible to establish an administration that will equally, in a balanced way, and fairly deal with all these heritages. Serbian cultural heritage can only be cared for by our institutions, by those who live in it, and they will be the living church, living civilization, and living future of this people,” Rakocevic said.

As one of the threats that led UNESCO to list Serbian sites on the List of World Heritage in Danger, UNESCO mentioned difficulties in monitoring these sites due to political instability. Rakocevic states that when it comes to Kosovo and Metohija and cultural heritage, the essence is in three points: destruction, falsification, and ultimately appropriation.

“This is an entire corpus in which you cannot avoid responsibility, and in the end, you must arrive at the exact term, at the precise formulation. This is approximately the correct formulation in which political insecurity is a determinant that encompasses everything happening to us in Kosovo and Metohija, regardless of how we interpret and interpret it, including the endangerment of lives, ghetto communities, endangerment of the Serbian Orthodox Church at all levels, and thirdly, innocent people in prisons, of whom we currently have dozens. All this must somehow be translated into something delicately called ‘political insecurity,’” Rakocevic concluded.