Several hundred people packed the Bishop Nikolaj Community Centre in West London on the evening of Saturday May 24 for a remembrance and discussion event marking 26 years since NATO’s war of aggression against Serbia and the former Yugoslavia, organised by the Round Table of Serbian organisations and community groups in the United Kingdom. Among those present were Serbian Ambassador Goran Aleksić, diplomats from the Belarus Embassy and journalists from the Xinhua News Agency and China Daily.
The meeting was preceded by a memorial service in the adjacent Serbian Orthodox Church of Saint Sava, where prayers offered included those for the three Chinese journalists killed when US-led NATO bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.
A panel discussion, chaired by retired academic Michael Stenton, featured Misha Gavrilović and Marko Gasić, co-chairs of the British-Serbian Alliance for Peace; Dr. Kate Hudson, Vice-President of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and author of ‘Breaking the South Slav Dream’; and Laurie Mayer, former BBC and Sky News presenter and broadcast journalist. And, following a break for refreshments and networking, there were contributions from veteran peace activist Carol Turner, who co-founded and led the Committee for Peace in the Balkans with the late Alice Mahon MP in 1994; and Keith Bennett, co-editor of Friends of Socialist China.
The evening was closed with a brief recital from Zorka Maksimovic.
Speakers pointed out that, contrary to the propaganda advanced in Britain, there had been no threat of a Greater Serbia but rather of a Greater NATO. The real meaning of NATO expansion was exposed, namely military aggression beyond its borders. The war against Yugoslavia was neither humanitarian nor legal. Rather, it was what the Nuremburg trials established as the supreme international crime – a war of aggression. The war was characterised by numerous atrocities – the bombing of passenger trains, refugee convoys, factories, hospitals, the TV station and the Chinese Embassy. Depleted Uranium was used, condemning future generations and the environment to its lethal effects.
The wounds of the conflict have not healed. Serbian sovereignty is still being transgressed, for example on the question of Kosovo. Moreover, the war had opened Pandora’s Box – that the Western powers could attack whomever they wanted. This was soon seen in Iraq and is still ongoing – in NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine and Israel’s war against the Palestinian people. In Laurie Mayer’s words, the war against Yugoslavia represented raw imperialism run amuck.
The following is Keith’s message delivered at the meeting on behalf of Friends of Socialist China.
Your Excellency
Ladies and Gentlemen
Dear Friends
On behalf of Friends of Socialist China, I’d like to express our thanks to the organisers of this eventfor inviting us to join them in marking the solemn occasion of the 26th Anniversary of the NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
With war raging in Europe and the Middle East, it is appropriate that we remember and mark this anniversary of the first time that full-scale war returned to our continent since the defeat of fascism in 1945.
This is also the 80th anniversary year of that victory. The peoples of both Serbia and China played heroic and indispensable parts in the defeat of fascism. They pinned down hundreds of thousands, indeed millions, of axis troops and liberated their countries, principally on the basis of self-reliance.
The enduring friendship between China and Serbia has its root in this common struggle on the eastern and western fronts. The 1969 Yugoslav film, The Bridge, vividly depicted those days. It was one of the first foreign films to be shown in China at the start of reform and opening up. Both the film, and through it the song Bella Ciao, became favourites of a generation of Chinese people, including President Xi Jinping.
Dear Friends
As you know, on May 7, 1999, in one of the gross violations of international law that characterised this war of aggression, US-led NATO brazenly bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Three journalists, including a newly married couple, from the Xinhua News Agency and the Guangming Daily, were killed and many more people were injured. The husband of the third journalist was blinded.
The indestructible friendship between China and Serbia, which we might call China’s best friend in Europe, is the most fitting tribute to their memory, demonstrating as it does that their sacrifice was not in vain.
As President Xi said during his June 2016 state visit to Serbia, having paid tribute to the martyrs, “The Serbian people, with an indomitable spirit, have revived time and again in history… which the Chinese people admire very much.”
In today’s complicated and tense international situation, the friendship between China and Serbia is an important factor for peace and stability. As friends of China, it is completely natural and appropriate that we think of Serbia, too, as a brotherly and friendly country. And the Serbian diaspora and community here as our brothers and sisters.
This evening, we make new friends and renew old friendships with people with whom we campaigned and marched shoulder to shoulder back in 1999.
Let’s continue to work together for peace and justice.
Thank you once again.
