Seventh-day Adventist pastor Josip Tikvicki was seriously beaten April 15 in front of the Adventist Church in the city of Zrenjanin, 40 miles (65 km) northeast of the Serbian capital, Belgrade.
Seventh-day Adventist pastor Josip Tikvicki was seriously beaten April 15 in front of the Adventist Church in the city of Zrenjanin, 40 miles (65 km) northeast of the Serbian capital, Belgrade.
In the last 10 days eight Adventist churches were targeted by what is being viewed as an “orchestrated campaign against a religious minority” in a predominantly Orthodox country.
Just before midnight on April 15, Tikvicki and his wife heard glass breaking. He went outside to investigate and confronted a group of three men who were throwing stones at the windows and vandalizing the church. He was then attacked. According to church sources, Tikvicki was kicked, hit, and then fell to the ground, losing consciousness. He was reported to have asked his attackers, “How long are you going to beat me?”
Church sources say he was found unconscious by the police, and was taken to the city hospital by an ambulance. Tikvicki remains hospitalized, according to Adventist News Review in St. Albans, England, and is suffering from a concussion, several fractured ribs, a broken jaw—which has left him unable to speak—and a number of minor injuries.
A report from Belgrade indicates that the city police arrested the three men involved in the attack.
“I was shocked when I received the news about my colleague and the suffering he has gone through. The whole Adventist Church, together with other protestant churches, joined together over the weekend in prayer for our colleague and his family,” said Dr. Radisa Antic, president of the Adventist Church in the South-East European area.
“This, however, is not an isolated incident. I am deeply concerned about what is happening to our churches across the country. In the last 10 days our central church in Belgrade was stoned twice, along with the church in the cities of Kragujevac, Negotin, Smederevo, and Backa Palanka. Obviously these are not coincidences, but rather orchestrated attacks by some organizations targeting religious minorities,” Antic said.
In a phone conversation with Adventist News Network today, Antic said that in spite of the outrage expressed publicly in the last few days, another attack took place in the city of Negotin yesterday. “Our church was attacked with stones and windows were broken. I consider this an orchestrated campaign against us,” he said.
Antic said that some of the media reports are distorting facts, and comments are made that Adventists are to be blamed for the attacks. “All of this is just a dirty play. It’s all orchestrated by some militants who are interested in disrupting social peace and religious freedom.”
The attack was widely reported in the Serbian press and drew international condemnation of the attacks on the church. The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia issued a statement on April 17, and called for “the attention of the public to the regular act of hatred, xenophobia and aggression towards any kind of minorities, which culminated with the attack on the Adventist Church in Zrenjanin and the beating of pastor Tikvicki. The committee calls for government officials to take adequate action in protecting the rights of all citizens, including the freedom of religion.”
“I feel deeply distressed about this sad news. I have met Josip Tikvicki many times and my prayers are with him and his family,” comments Dr. Bertil Wiklander, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Trans-European region. Wiklander added, “I plead with the Serbian authorities to ensure the safety and freedom of worship for all believers in the country, as we have the right to expect from a civilized country in modern Europe.”
The leaders of the Adventist Church immediately contacted government officials, including the Ministry of Ethnic and Religious Minorities. ANR has learned that the secretary of the ministry, Zoran Martinovic, visited Pastor Tikvicki in the hospital. Until today, the government has issued no official comment on the attacks, church sources say.
Church sources reported that the April 15 attack on Tikvicki and the church was a finale to all the earlier threats and attacks on Adventists in Zrenjanin.
The thousands of Adventists in Serbia are highly concerned about these latest attacks and feel threatened and insecure. “Despite our regular reports to the authorities of these and similar incidents, measures taken were not adequate nor were we protected appropriately,” says Miodrag Zivanovic, communication director of the Adventist Church in Serbia.
Zivanovic also added that statements and articles in the media “are often a cause of hostility and antagonism that turns people against the church. This is because they show a ‘finger of hate’ pointed at us, [and] even though we are a recognized church, we are very often called a sect,” he said.
There are 10,000 Seventh-day Adventist church members in Serbia, which is part of the church’s South-East European Union with headquarters in Belgrade. The Adventist Church is considered to be among the fastest growing mainstream Protestant denominations in Serbia.