An Instagram account run by Serbian activists who were posting pictures of Christian places of worship in Kosovo which had been demolished by the region’s Albanian Muslim majority population has been removed; the site’s administration explained that the group had been posting “disturbing images”.
Hoping to foil Kosovo’s attempt to become a member of UNESCO, ethnically Serbian student activists in the self-proclaimed state created a page on Instagram called “No to Kosovo’s Membership in UNESCO”. There they posted photos of numerous Orthodox Christian places of worship and significance, including monasteries, churches and cemeteries, which were demolished in the years after ethnic Albanian Muslims gained de facto independence with the help of a deadly NATO bombing campaign and EU endorsement. Instagram responded by blocking the account for its “disturbing content”.
“We have been told that we are posting disturbing images, and we simply posted the truth — the burning of Serb churches and monasteries, the holy places, the destruction of monuments, tombs, and so on,” Nemanja Bisevac, one of the account’s administrators, told journalists.
Jovan Aleksic, another administrator of the account and an activist with the protest group Students for Truth (Studenti za Istinu), told Sputnik Serbia he believes the Instagram page was suspended after a complaint from “those who are pushing the so-called Kosovo state forward to UNESCO”, pointing at the Albanian administration of the breakaway region.
The account was a part of a broader campaign dubbed “No to Kosovo’s Membership in UNESCO”, led by Kosovan Serbian students, which hopes to deny Kosovo UNESCO membership.
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