Gun-toting Kids Camp Causes Alarm in Serbia

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 Kučaj 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.

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.

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”.

The organisers believe that young people “need help to resist...