Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro …. [Mark A. Kellner/ANN]
Seventh-day Adventist Christians in Serbia and Montenegro now have a new ally when the media falsely accuses the Protestant Church of being a “sect” or a “cult.” The nation’s Ministry for Human and Minority Rights said they “will be your defender in such attacks.”
Responding to a letter from Adventist leaders expressing concern about recent incorrect newspaper articles that mislabeled the church, minister Rasim Ljajic said his office “has scheduled a meeting with editors of various print media in order to draw their attention to the inaccuracies” some reports have presented. Ljajic said the ministry “will continue to fight for the rights of all religious communities without regard to their size or duration of existence in our territory.”
The meetings have not yet taken place, said Pastor Radivoj Vladisavljevic, president of the Adventist Church in the area, but already the newspapers have stopped printing the negative articles, which had incorrectly suggested the church was a danger to society and mentioned along with Satanist-related groups.
“In our opinion, similar articles that were published last year inspired the attack on Pastor Jovan Tikvicki and some of the other attacks on many of our church members and church buildings,” Pastor Vladisavljevic said. “We expect that the attitude of the Ministry will give a positive contribution to protection of religious liberty.”
He added, “The Seventh-day Adventist Church appreciates the endeavor of the government to make it possible for us to profess our faith. We believe that kind of attitude will be vital to improving of the reputation of our country in the world. These positive attitudes and actions, which we believe will happen, will create a positive picture of improving the tolerance and the democracy in our country.”
Such an expression of support for religious freedom is important in Serbia and Montenegro, a nation that split off from the former Yugoslavia. On April 15, 2003, Adventist Pastor Tikvicki was seriously beaten by three assailants in front of his church in the city of Zrenjanin, 40 miles (65 km) northeast of the Serbian capital, Belgrade.
Before that attack, 10 Adventist churches were targeted by what is being viewed as an “orchestrated campaign against a religious minority” in a predominantly Orthodox country, church officials said. (See ANN, April 29, 2003 for details.)
An estimated 8,300 Seventh-day Adventist Christians worship in 209 congregations in the region.
Copyright © 2003 Adventist News Network.
