Serbs were not defenders of Christendom

From Mr Michael Petek SIR Hermann Kelly (Comment, March 7) shows an appalling lack of historical memory in his eulogy of the Serbs over Kosovo.
As an Irishman he really should know better. The justification for allowing Kosovo to become independent from Serbia is not only that nearly all its people are ethnic Albanians and not Serbs. The Kosovars suffered appallingly during the 1990s from the likes of Arkan's Tigers, who made the Black and Tans look like dilettantes. That is why they reject the right of Serbia to rule over them. The Serbs are learning the lesson the British learned in Ireland: that you cannot rule a people for any length of time.against their will, at least not democratically.
It is untrue that the Serbs have been stalwart defenders of Christendom against the Turks over the centuries. For 70 years after the inconclusive Battle of Kosovo they fought as will ing vassals of the Turks against Catholic Hungary, while their episcopal hierarchy in communion with Constantinople served their Ottoman masters as enthusiastically as they had previously served the Christian emperors.
It was in fact Croatia which has been known as antemurale Christianttatis since Pope Leo X gave them the title in 1519.
No Irishman needs to be reminded of the Croke Park massacre of 1920 by the RIC Auxiliaries in which 14 people were killed. But it is evident that Mr Kelly's memory is more than a little blank about the Serb campaign of terrorism in Croatia and Bosnia in which they persecuted the Catholic Church to death during the 1990s, and in particular the murder of over 200 patients and medical staff in the Vukovar Hospital massacre.
Yours faithfully, MICHAEL PETEK Brighton, E Sussex