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March 14, 2015. Interview with Arnaud Gouillon, Founder and Director of “Solidarité Kosovo” by bvoltaire.fr

Your non-governmental organization “Solidarité Kosovo” is not oriented towards the actual general interest to the Middle East problems. We [French people] support Christians in the Orient  rather than those of Kosovo. Are the Orthodox Serbs of Kosovo still in danger?

We started “Solidarité Kosovo” in 2004, while Kosovo was suffering from the terrible anti-Christian actions. Despite of the violence of those terror attacks, nobody has neither opposed them nor has been affected by the humble destiny of Serbian families in Kosovo.

The results of those attacks against Christians in Kosovo which began as early as in 1999 are disturbing:

- 150 churches and monasteries destroyed

- 250,000 Serbs chased from the land of their forefathers (70% of Christian population of Kosovo)

- 1,300 persons kidnapped and never found

- Thousands of houses burnt.

Le Figaro Magazine edited the map of intolerance, indicating the zones, where Christians could not live in peace because of their faith, and Kosovo was the only territory in Europe appearing there in 2013 and 2014. We are in 2015 now, and yet the four Christian sites in Kosovo are classified as UNESCO “World Heritage in Danger”…

What about the actual situation of the Christians in this small State of ex-Yugoslavia? You are speaking of Orthodox enclaves under hostile siege.

The 120,000 Serbs still living in Kosovo are blocked in the enclaves. An enclave is a ghetto, an open air prison that one can not leave without being insulted, agressed or humiliated. Kosovo is spotted with small enclaves, same as villages in Astérix comic books. Certain enclaves, such as Orahovac, are still protected with barbed wire, others like Zac are under permanent police protection. It is a sad destiny for those Christians when you know that there was time when Kosovo had the largest density of Christian buildings in the world and the Serbian identity was born there. Kosovo means the same to Serbia as Île-de-France does to France. Nowadays Serbs of Kosovo represent a little less than 10 % of Kosovo population, now composed of 90 % Albanian Muslims.

In your latest bulletin you report about having troubles entering Kosovo with humanitarian aid. What happened and why were you obliged to stay a week on the border?

This happened to us for the first time in 10 years and after 35 humanitarian convoys delivered. “Difficulties on the border during the transit of our aid at the end of the year” would be a light euphemism to describe that pitiful experience.Why would someone prevent the passage of a truck loaded with 30 cubic meters of humanitarian aid (new clothes and toys) to the Christian population of Kosovo-Metohija? Clearly, the answer is hidden inside the question …

On March 17 you will celebrate the 11th anniversary of “Solidarité Kosovo”. Name the goal you set at the beginning? And explain that personal commitment you did to this country which is far away from our concerns?

The goal we set at the beginning and we are pursuing today is to “provide material and moral support to the Christian Serbs in Kosovo”. Why this personal commitment? There are numerous reasons for that, but I believe that the anti-Christian pogroms which had broken out in Kosovo in 2004 made me act. A massacre or persecution of people, wherever they occur, are odious. But the bare fact that it happens in Europe, in a two-hour flight distance from Paris, made them even more outrageous. Because those churches on fire in Kosovo, they were a piece of disappearing European civilization.

Can you make an evaluation of eleven years of your service to the Serbs who found themselves one day under Albanian domination?

Over the passed decade the association has greately developed though the spirit has remained.The result is 35 humanitarian convoys sent from 2004 to 2014. This is more than twenty local projects realized in official partnership with the Kosovo Church in the domain of school rehabilitation, economy development, sport and childcare. We brought 400 tonnes of equipment with total value of over 2 million euros.

For sure, we did not change the world with it, but we provided direct help to people. We worked to make their lives not that harsh. We made it  possible for some students we never met to study in peace. We made it possible for some lonely elderly women to feel less cold in winter. We made some children smile. For everybody, we have shown that one should never despair and that solidarity is not just an abstract word.

All of the above has become possible only with good grace of contributors. By 2005 they were ten, today they are 10,000 … The association exists on 100% private donations, that guarantees us freedom of action and total independence. A  small humanitarian organization from Grenoble (France) has become, in a decade of hard work, the major non-governmental organization to intervene in the Balkans.

Interview done by Floris de Bonneville