ORTHODOX ARCHBISHOP JAILED IN MACEDONIA
By Jeremy Reynalds (07/27/05)
The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Macedonia has begun an 18-month prison sentence for "inciting national, racial and religious hatred, schism and intolerance."
Archbishop Jovan of Ohrid and Skopje was taken to Idrizovo prison in Macedonia's capital of Skopje on July 26 to begin the sentence, imposed in 2004.
Macedonia is located in Southeastern Europe, north of Greece (www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/mk.html).
Jovan's colleague, Bishop Marko of Dremvica and Bitola, complained about the way police took Jovan to jail. Marko told Forum 18 News Service they grabbed Jovan from his car in Skopje, refusing to allow him to take anything with him into prison.
"The archbishop was not permitted to take his prayer book, the Gospels, an icon or any of the insignia of his rank with him," Marko told Forum 18 News Service.
In addition, Forum 18 reported, Jovan was not allowed to speak to members of the media gathered in front of the prison.
During the next 30 days, Forum 18 reported, Jovan is not allowed visits from anyone other than his lawyer and immediate family. However, his family visitation is severely restricted. After the initial 30 days he will be relocated within the prison, either to a maximum security unit or to a unit with less strict discipline.
Jovan's sentence came into effect after the Appeal Court, in his home town of Bitola, rejected his request for his 18- month prison sentence to be delayed until the Supreme Court rules on his appeal.
Jovan's appeal to the Supreme Court could last for up to a year. He will then be allowed to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Jovan told Forum 18, "I may sit in jail, and cannot make my case abroad until I completely finish with all the domestic courts. This is why my hearing before the Supreme Court is being delayed for so long."
An order was issued on July 25 for Jovan to report the following day not to the local Bitola prison, but to Idrizovo prison. Marko told Forum 18 that when he and Jovan drove from Bitola to Skopje on July 26, they were escorted by a police car for the whole journey and that "several times we were stopped by police and our car searched, and our documents checked and rechecked."
Marko added, "When we arrived in the suburbs of Skopje, we were finally stopped by another patrol, and told to wait until further notice. Then, after an hour, about 10 police squad cars appeared, surrounded us, and they pulled the Archbishop out of the car and put him in a police car. They said that he would be driven to a police station nearby, and that we will receive all other information there. Upon our arrival, we were told that he was in jail, after he was forced to change his clothes. The police then told us that Archbishop Jovan was late and that an arrest warrant was issued for him. This is ridiculous, since his passport was taken ten days ago, and our monastery was under non-stop police surveillance the whole time."
Jovan has previously been jailed in 2003, when he was given five days' solitary confinement for baptizing his sister's grandchild (see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=113).
Subsequently, on Oct. 31 2003, Jovan was given a 12-month sentence, suspended for two years, for performing the baptism in a church building belonging to the rival Macedonian Orthodox Church, which was deemed to be violent entry into Macedonian Church property (see
www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=228).
Jovan told Forum 18, "I did not offend against the law in any way. But, the government can also activate the suspended sentence if facts not previously known to judges are found. They activated the sentence because they claim that they did not know that I was the
Serbian Orthodox Exarch (protector) of the Ohrid Archbishopric! This is absurd, since the previous sentence is accusing me of exactly that on two pages. They are trying to sentence me twice for the same act."
Forum 18 reported that the state is also pursuing two more criminal investigations against Jovan, both for alleged fraud and mismanagement of funds while he was serving as a bishop of the Macedonian Orthodox Church. All the trials and charges were launched when Jovan left the Macedonian Orthodox Church and transferred to the Serbian Orthodox Church.
SERBIAN AND MACEDONIAN CHURCHES: THE DISPUTE
The roots of the dispute between the Serbian and Macedonian Churches, Forum 18 reported, lie in the creation of the Macedonian Church in 1958 under heavy pressure from the then-communist government of Marshal Tito (http://history1900s.about.com/cs/josiptito). In 1968 the Macedonian Church proclaimed its complete independence from the Serbian Orthodox Church, but Forum 18 reported that no other canonical Orthodox Church in the world recognizes this.
Forum 18 reported that during a long-running campaign against the Serbian Orthodox Church the government has, among other things, repeatedly refused to give state registration to the Serbian Orthodox Church (see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=505), staged police raids with priests of the rival Macedonian Orthodox Church to "persuade" members of the Serbian Church in Macedonia to join the Macedonian Church (see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=506), and demolished a monastery (see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=437) after a paramilitary "state security unit" attacked it with machine guns (see www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=259).
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