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Religious hardliners in Serbia are being accused of abuse of minors - and even of breaking the law - in connection with a controversial summer camp.

The 15 children attending the St Lazar’s Summer Youth Camp this July in the Ku?aj mountains of eastern Serbia were taught to wear military uniform and shoot from replica Kalashnikov rifles.

The camp was organised by a breakaway sect styling itself the Serbian True Orthodox Church, whose leader, Nemanja Stankovic, was expelled from the Serbian Orthodox Church – Serbia’s main faith group

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According to the organisation’s website, the days at the camp started with prayers, the raising of the national flag and the singing of the national anthem.

Over the next ten days, the children engaged in sporting activities, camping and long walks - all regular activities in summer camps.


Shooting practice. | Photo by serbiantrueorthodox.blogspot.com
The difference is that they also wore masked uniforms and learned how to shoot from automatic rifles, using replica kalashnikovs.

The camp organisers said they aimed to “deeply root in young participants a sense of community, civility, self-sacrifice, courage, spirituality and unwavering loyalty to the Orthodox faith and fatherland.

“The latter includes military discipline… and some of the most basic forms of military training. Military dress style also aids a feeling of willingness to serve the fatherland,” writes the website of the organisation.

The camp also provided its attendees basic education about the “sublime and indispensable of the Orthodox (non-parliamentary) monarchy, while exposing the false, and for Serbian people pernicious, political directions of communism and democracy”.

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Serbian True Orthodox Church, formed in the mid-1990s, fiercely opposes all contact between the Orthodox Church and other faith groups. Their slogan is “Orthodoxy or Death”. Similar organisations exist in Russia and Greece.

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Since Christmas in January 2017, services under the name of the “Serbian True Orthodox Church” (STOC) began in Ealing and Leicester. They were located at venues where services were once held by the Free Church. We spoke to a number of those present who felt duped into thinking they were at a Free Serbian Orthodox Church, a movement which has since been reconciled to the main Church.

Church Reacts

A diocesan meeting attended by His Grace Bishop Dositej and priests from across the Serbian Orthodox Church in Britain issued a stark warning for the faithful to be on their guard. The statement labelled the newcomers a sect, the “Akaki” named after Akakije who would become its self-styled bishop as one of the three Serb monks who founded it in 1996. They have been excommunicated by all the Orthodox Churches but are allied to the Greek Old Calendarists.

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Gun Play

The most recent issue of Diaspora periodical Serb Worldwide Magazine has gone further in its charges against the sect. The Akaki caused controversy when they formed a military-style camp for children as young as 7-years-old.
Photographs show kids being taught military skills including how to fire air rifle replicas of Kalashnikovs at a survivalist base in the Ku?aj mountains called the “Holy Lazar Orthodox Youth Camp”. Organisers were accused of “child recruitment and child abuse” according to an article in Blic.

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http://www.blic.rs/vesti/drustvo/spavanje-u-pecinama-sklekovi-i-kalasnjikovi-sekta-na-kucajskim-planinama-sprema-decu/m8ckp7e

Spavanje u pe?inama, sklekovi i "kalašnjikovi": Sekta na Ku?ajskim planinama sprema decu za rat

Zorica Lazarevi? | 03. 08. 2014