On April 16, 1982, 21 Serbian priests and monks addressed an appeal to the Yugoslav government that focused on the human rights violations against Kosovo Serbs in Kosovo:
“It may be said without exaggeration that systematic genocide is gradually being perpetrated against the Serbian people in Kosovo! Because, if this were not the case, what do the theses about an 'ethnically clean Kosovo' mean which, regardless of everything, is being implemented without interruption? Or what do the words, often repeated in villages and hamlets, monasteries and churches and even in towns mean: 'What are you waiting for? Move away, this is ours!'"
Albanian separatists had targeted Serbian Orthodox Churches even after the end of World War II. In March, 1952, the Serbian Orthodox Church in the village of Duganjevo near Urosevac was destroyed. In 1949, the Serbian Orthodox Memorial Church in Djakovica was dynamited and blown up on a major Serbian Orthodox Christian holiday, St. Sava's Day. According to the report by the delegation of priests: “Various Albanian facilities were erected on the foundations of Serbian churches and cultural monuments if they were not completely destroyed."
“It may be said without exaggeration that systematic genocide is gradually being perpetrated against the Serbian people in Kosovo! Because, if this were not the case, what do the theses about an 'ethnically clean Kosovo' mean which, regardless of everything, is being implemented without interruption? Or what do the words, often repeated in villages and hamlets, monasteries and churches and even in towns mean: 'What are you waiting for? Move away, this is ours!'"
Albanian separatists had targeted Serbian Orthodox Churches even after the end of World War II. In March, 1952, the Serbian Orthodox Church in the village of Duganjevo near Urosevac was destroyed. In 1949, the Serbian Orthodox Memorial Church in Djakovica was dynamited and blown up on a major Serbian Orthodox Christian holiday, St. Sava's Day. According to the report by the delegation of priests: “Various Albanian facilities were erected on the foundations of Serbian churches and cultural monuments if they were not completely destroyed."