“Christians are the most endangered religious community. The horrible terrorist attacks put the violence against Christians in the Middle East in focus, however the members of the Christian religion are the persecuted minority in other parts of the world as well”, says Cotric.
Cotric, the Head of the National Assembly’s standing delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy and the Chairman of the organisation’s Culture Committee, said that “Christians in Iraq and Syria have fallen on hard times since they have become the target of radical Islamists who proclaimed the so-called Islamic Caliphate”.
“The members of the Islamic state bomb the villages and towns populated by Christians on a daily basis, confiscate their houses and property and destroy their temples and relics”, said Cotric explaining the IAO’s decision to organise the International Photo Contest with the topic “Destruction of monuments of the Christian east”.
Cotric said that with this contest, the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy, gathering 25 states from all the continents, wished to draw attention of the international community to the fact that Christians in Cyprus, Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Egypt and other states), the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija and other parts of the world face a modern Calvary as their churches, monasteries and monuments are either turned to ruin or completely wiped off the face of the earth.
At the session of the International Secretariat of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy, MP Aleksandar Cotric said that since 1999 the Serbian people, clergy and temples of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo-Metohija have been exposed to constant attacks, threats and provocation by Albanian terrorists and extremists.
“More than 300,000 Serbs have been exiled from their homes since then and about 150 churches, monasteries and other religious buildings have been destroyed, damaged and desecrated in Kosovo-Metohija. More than 10,000 icons, religious art and service objects have been stolen and destroyed, about 6,000 monuments in about 350 Serbian Orthodox cemeteries have been destroyed or damaged, while in more than 50 Serbian Orthodox cemeteries there is not a single undamaged monument left”, said Cotric adding that responsible people from all over the world need to point out these facts, remind the public of them and prevent the continuation of the abuse.
The participants of the session of the International Secretariat of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy in Cyprus, 22-25 November, were received, in separate meetings, by Cypriot Parliament Speaker Yiannakis Omirou, Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides and the Archbishop of Nova Justiniana and All Cyprus Chrysostom.