Churches Divide Vlachs in Eastern Serbia

22 April 2008 Attempts by the Romanian Orthodox Church to expand into Eastern Serbia are causing an unholy row in the region.

By Sasa Trifunovic in Bor

The rolling hills of the Timok region of eastern Serbia are home to a large portion of Serbia’s Vlach minority community.

One of the few regions of Serbia devoid of ethnic divisions, its harmony is now in jeopardy as a result of divisions within the Vlach community itself.

The cause of the discord is the Romanian Orthodox Church, which to the dismay of its Serbian counterpart has begun setting up parishes in eastern Serbia and splitting the Vlach community.

One group pledges allegiance to the Romanian Church, based is Bucharest, and which uses Romanian-language services, while the other remains loyal to the Serbian Patriarch in Belgrade.

Police have had to intervene twice to stop the two sides from coming to blows in recent years.

Serbia’s 40,000 Vlachs live in about 50 villages in eastern Serbia, in the district of Bor and the towns of Pozarevac, Jagodina and Paracin.

Previously claimed by both Serbs and Romanians, Vlachs gained the status in Serbia of a national minority in 2007.

The confusion has arisen over some Vlachs who have decided to declare themselves ethnic Romanians.

The Romanian Orthodox Church, meanwhile, has become increasingly active in the area since 2003, drawing about 10 per cent of the Vlachs into Romanian congregations.

Two Romanian priests now work in the area, joining the 26 Romanian priests serving the long-established Romanian community concentrated in Vrsac, in the northern province of Vojvodina.

The latest squabble between the two sides occurred in the village of Malajnica.

Bojan Aleksandrovic, a Romanian Orthodox priest ordained by the Romanian bishop from Vrsac, said police had “questioned” a family simply for holding a funeral service in the Romanian language in January.

Aleksandrovic said he complained to the police in nearby Bor about the grilling but the police insisted they acted within their rights.

“The police needed to gather information because of reports that an incident was about to happen,” Slavisa Barac, head of Bor police station, told Balkan Insight. “They had no intention of intimidating anyone.”

But Fr Aleksandrovic said that the move was not protective but intimidating and added up to “a blatant violation of the constitution which guarantees religious rights to all its ethnic groups”.

He added: “We have no problems with Serbs but we do have one with priests who are full of prejudices,” he said, referring to rivals from the Serbian Orthodox Church.

“Whenever I perform a mass, Serbian Church priests harass the people who attend,” he added.

The Vlach National Council, based in Bor, condemned the police for getting involved in the funeral service in Malajnica.

It has sent a letter of protest to the Ministry of Religion, the Interior Ministry and the Human and Minority Rights Department as well as to the Serbian Orthodox Church.

“We want a dialogue with all relevant state institutions and the Serbian Church so we can avoid similar problems in the future,” Zoran Jankovic, a member of the council, told Balkan Insight.

Some years ago, in May 2005, a more serious incident occurred. This took place after the Vlach Association of Serbia, a separate community organization, announced plans to mark the 610th anniversary of a battle against the Ottomans in the village of Rovine, near Negotin.

Fr Aleksandrovic of the Romanian Church was to have held the mass for the Vlach duke and his troops in the local Koroglas monastery.

But the religious service was called off after locals confronted the Romanian Vlach activists, telling them to “go to Romania”. Police had to intervene and separate the two camps.

The association’s secretary, Dusan Prvulovic, said their organisation had later demanded whether the Serbian Orthodox Church backed the people who stopped them from going into the monastery.

The hostility shown on that occasion reflects concern in the Serbian Orthodox Church about Romanian priests poaching their congregations.

This feeling has been growing in strength since 2002, when a Serbian monk named Justin issued a public complaint about the Romanian Church’s actions in eastern Serbia.

He complained that Vlachs in eastern Serbia were facing pressure to declare themselves as ethnic Romanians in the upcoming census.

The monks said the affair had been “cooked up by international factors with the aim of destabilising the region in order to forcefully turn Vlachs into Romanians”.

The monk supported his theory by showing anonymous pamphlets in which people were urged to “proudly declare yourself a Romanian Vlach in a democratic Serbia”.

He also condemned the visit to the village of Slatina by a Romanian archbishop and the Romanian ambassador to Serbia.

The visit was held to mark the 10th anniversary of the founding the Democratic Movement of Romanians in Serbia.

Fr Aleksandrovic responded by accusing the monk of orchestrating threats from the local authorities to demolish a Romanian Orthodox church, standing on his own land.

“Inspectors came to my property illegally, without my knowledge or consent,” Aleksandrovic claimed.

In the event, the controversial church building has remained where it was. But the priest continues to complain that Vlachs who identify with the Romanian Church suffer harassment.

In an interview earlier this year he said Romanian Vlachs in the area were being “deprived of their rights,” including the right to “pray in their native language”.

Locals in Malajnica, on the other hand, mainly take the side of the Serbian Orthodox Church and accuse the Romanian Orthodox Church of creating a rift in the Vlach community.

“We are Serbian and not Romanian Vlachs, so I see no reason why we shouldn’t have mass in Serbian,” Vojislav Aleksandrovic, 73, said.

Sasa Trifunovic is the Bor-based correspondent of Beta news agency. Balkan Insight is BIRN`s online publication.

This article was published with the support of the British embassy in Belgrade as part of BIRN's Minority Media Training and Reporting Project.

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