REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Monday, April 10, 2006

FOR widow Rosa Kljaic it was too much to bear, and the pain was etched on her face.

She stood in front of her husband’s elaborate black marble grave at Southport Cemetery sobbing and shaking her head at the damage vandals had done to it.

Her husband, George, died on April 4 2005 and his grave was one of 42 desecrated in the cemetery. Vandals snapped off 21 crosses turned them upside down and stuck them into the nearby ground.

An inverted cross is one of the key symbols of satanism, something police officers considered as they investigated what they described as “an unconscionable act”.

Mrs Kljaic spent $5000 on her late husband’s grave.

“He worked hard all his life and I wanted to give him this,’’ she said. “Look at what they have done.”

George’s cousin, Mick Kljaic, said they were at the Serbian church when someone told them many graves had been desecrated.

“We rushed over here and saw what they had done to George’s grave,’’ he said. “This wouldn’t even happen in Serbia.

“It’s disgraceful. What sort of people would do this?”

White shoeprints covered the black grave where one of the vandals had walked across it. There was another shoeprint on the front of the grave where the vandal had kicked it.

Chris Longworth was shocked when she made her monthly visit to the grave of her father, Andrew Georgiou, who died in 2004.

“I was not impressed,’’ she said. “So many graves have been damaged, it looks like a massacre.”