Witness-Serbs in Britain: When the truth is too painful to believe

THE VANGUARD - seven British Serbs - set up camp in Whitehall, opposite Downing Street, hours after the first bombs rained down on Yugoslavia. A couple of hundred noisy Serbian protesters now gather daily, with numbers expected to swell today when busloads of Serbs converge on London from communities all over Britain.

It is a little like a party, this round-the-clock protest. The Dunkirk spirit reported to be buoying up Belgrade has also gripped these emigres, who sport the same target stickers being defiantly worn in the Yugoslav capital.

Standing in the dark on Thursday night, bathed in lamp light, they sang patriotic songs from World War 11, and blew football whistles, in deafening unity, at passing traffic. A white stretch limo, which slowed down to sound its horn, was rewarded with the wildest cheers and a mass fluttering of Serbian flags. Even the middle-aged protester tucking into a pound box of Milk Tray stopped munching long enough to wave. Everyone just assumed the driver supported British Serbs' demands that Nato stop its bombing.

In Yugoslavia, Nato strikes have smothered the remaining opposition to President Milosevic. In Britain a similar process is under way. Two weeks ago London's Serb community was bitterly divided over Milosevic's rule and Serbian responsibility for the long, bloody list of atrocities that have accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia. But Tomahawk cruise missiles have obliterated divisions, and sucked everyone back into one big - albeit dysfunctional - Serb family.

On the eve of the Nato bombing campaign, Avram Balabanovic, one of the Serbian community's rare internal critics, was preparing for a public debate with Misha Gavrilovic, the former Serbian community spokesman who lost his post last year for being "too pro-Milosevic". The event was cancelled when the bombing started. Now the two men find themselves behind the same protest barrier.

While they are not exactly holding hands, they have temporarily put aside their differences. "The bombing has been an unwanted unifying force," admits Mr Balabanovic, who is struggling to get his elderly mother out of Belgrade and, like most Serbs, is up half the night trying to get through to Yugoslavia to check on family and friends. "This is not a time for opposition," he says. "That would be misunderstood. And anyway I am against the bombings. Milosevic will only fall from within, and Nato's bombs have silenced the opposition."

The West's tactics have left him a bitter man, and have stalled his campaign to persuade his community to take up meaningful self-examination. "If they had given the money for one Tomahawk to opposition parties, Milosevic would not still be in power."

Once again Serbs are being denounced in the British papers as Nazis and murderous "ethnic cleansers". It is the British government's conviction that if the Serbs of Belgrade, who mostly rely on the state-controlled media, could see the misery of the "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo and hear the allegations of murder, rape and political executions, scales would fall from eyes, support for Milosevic would wither, and the justness of Nato's cause would be recognised.

But as Dajan Djokic, a Serbian historian teaching in London, points out, Britain's Serbian community see the pictures of suffering Albanians everyday and they still blame Nato, not Milosevic, for the war. That conviction is shared by all British Serbs. On the protest line this week many were insisting that the "ethnic cleansing" being shown on television is all lies.

To make sense of that, you have to understand the community's intense feeling of beleaguerment. Two months ago I spent several weeks interviewing British Serbs about about their descent from lauded wartime British allies into the bogeymen of Europe. It was a delicate task. People were reluctant to talk or be photographed. At the very least, Serbs distrust the media. Many simply loathe them, insisting that vilification of the Serbs has made their children ashamed of their heritage. A blind, defensive loyalty to the homeland prevails, even among those who hate Milosevic or have not visited Yugoslavia for 50 years.

As a thankyou to those who did help, I agreed to "defend" the resulting magazine article at a public meeting. I expected a handful of Serbs to turn up to discuss an innocuous piece. The small hall was full and critical, and the tension palpable. Although some were grateful for a presentation of Serbs as people, not monsters, others clearly felt that no outsider was entitled to comment. The most hostile were those who had not read the feature. With all the lies and poison about Serbs in the media, they said, they already knew they would hate it.

From the body of the hall, Mr Gavrilovic peddled soothing theories of an international media conspiracy against innocent Serbs, and upheld the comforting image - dating back two world wars - of the Serbs as victims, not aggressors. Mr Balabanovic countered by warning people not to indulge in self-deception and the abdication of responsibility. Mr Gavrilovic was by far the more popular speaker.

After the Nato bombings, even more people were gravitating towards Mr Gavrilovic's position. At the Whitehall demo they queued up to argue that it is British Serbs, not their relatives in Belgrade, who are being fed lies.

"Everything they tell you about Serbs is a lie," said one of the protest stewards, angry that his daughter is coming home from school in tears after taunts from classmates that "Nato will get you". The steward insists that "ethnic cleansing" is not taking place in Kosovo. He also believes that the infamous massacre at Srebrenica in 1995 never happened.

To believe that the television news is lying necessitates the belief that Serbia is the object of a huge and complex conspiracy. But even liberal and rational Serbs, like Vesna Petkovic, aged 44, a bookseller, are prepared to believe, this time, that the British media are not giving a balanced view. The Albanians, she insists, are simply running from the Nato bombardment.

She says that the war, and the British press's likening of Serbs to Nazis, have left her daughter, aged 11 - raised to be proud of her Serbian heritage - "hysterical". The girl is terrified that her father, currently in Belgrade, will be killed. Ms Petkovic is taking her to Portugal next week to escape the unrelenting war coverage.

The Whitehall protests are galvanising even the young and previously apolitical. And the conviction that the Nato action is immoral is finally convincing some that the Serbs are not villains, but the Balkans' unrecognised victims.

Marijana Marjanovic, aged 18, had no interest in politics in January. This week she was on the protest line. Her father has been there every day and her Croatian mother - who she says is, if anything, more upset than her father - has also protested. "I just can't believe the bombing is happening," she says. "But everyone is together on this issue."

Many are incredulous that it is Britain bombing Serbia. Sonia Besford, a writer, came to Britain from Yugoslavia 28 years ago already in love with English culture. For her the bombing is a terrible betrayal. "I am not for Milosevic but my sympathies are with the Serbian people," she says. She distrusts the media on the basis that Serbs cannot possibly be as demonic as always portrayed.

"Serbs are partly to blame but not 99.9 per cent," she says. How, she asks, can we be sure that the sinister men in masks hounding Albanians from their homes are not members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, forcing their own people on to the roads to make the Serbs look bad?

Mr Balabanovic does not go in for such imaginative interpretations. He does not doubt that "ethnic cleansing" is under way. But it would be folly to argue the toss with his fellow protesters. Have British Serbs, rallied around the one issue of the bombardment, any sympathy for Kosovo's suffering and dispossessed? Some say they have. Other hearts seem hard. Where was the sympathy, asks the steward, when 200,000 Serbs were forced out of Krajina in Croatia? "Sometimes media coverage would make you think Serbs did not have women and children," he says.

Perhaps it's hard to be generous when those at home are under fire. Even Mr Djokic, generally the most impartial of academics, says it is hard to hold on to objectivity when bombs fall on the homeland. He has spent the last 10 days glued to the television set or struggling to get a line to Yugoslavia, where his mother is unable to take refuge in the basement because she cannot get her 88-year-old disabled father downstairs.

"The bombing is bad enough," he says. "It is counter-productive. But my real worry is what will follow. Milosevic will emerge stronger and an already weak economy will be destroyed. I worry the Serbs will be left with Milosevic for ever more. That will be the real tragedy."