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Kosovo Christians Suffer Persecution, “It’s Not Easy For Us”

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A Christian rights watchdog organization reports that Christians in Kosovo have been experiencing widespread persecution, Christian Daily reports. A small southeastern European country which separated from Serbia in 2008, Kosovo has a 93% Muslim population; just 6% of the population is Christian.

In an interview with Christian Daily, Anja Hoffmann, executive director of the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDACE) said evangelical churches in Kosovo have been especially subjected to repression by local authorities. “While the right to freedom of religion is enshrined in Kosovo’s constitution, discrimination and violence are unfortunately still fairly widespread against the Christian minorities in the country,” Hoffmann said.

“Because the law does not provide for any mechanism to obtain legal status through registration, it is not possible for religious communities to own property, open bank accounts or employ staff as a collective entity,” Hoffman added.

Moreover, Hoffmann said, Serbian Orthodox, Catholic and other historic churches in Kosovo have been targeted with hate crimes. “Tragically, there has been widespread desecration of Serbian Orthodox cemeteries in the past years,” she said. “These incidents, however, also reveal the intersection of religion and ethnicity in the case of some of the anti-Christian hate crimes in Kosovo.”

In a separate statement to Christian Daily, Rev. Artur Krasniqi of the Fellowship of the Lord’s People evangelical church in Pristina, Kosovo, said evangelical Christians are suffering “silent persecution” and “discrimination by laws,“ Krasniqi added: “It’s not easy for us.”