Dr. Colin Campbell, a Great Admirer of the Serbian People

Recently I had the pleasure of sitting down and chatting with my former teacher, current colleague and a long time ally and supporter of the Serbian community, Colin C.M Campbell PhD. The conversation was an enticing one to say the least, as we discussed everything from his initial days of encountering and teaching Serbian students, to his travels across former Yugoslavia where he sought to explore the events of the Balkan War, and finally ending off on a long discussion about the Orthodox faith. Each time I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with Colin, I have left feeling enlightened and enriched with knowledge, this time was no different.

I first came to know Colin, as Mr. Campbell, one of the Science teachers in my high school, Glendale Secondary School. From my perspective, I saw him as a kind and caring teacher who went out of his way to help his students. He was the teacher organizer of the International Club, where students were provided with unique opportunities to participate in excursions to operas and plays, as well as lunch time gatherings filled with delicious foods from around the world. It was upon my completion of university and having begun my teaching career, that I got to know Colin on another level. He had become a pillar of the Serbian community at this point, through his writings about the Balkan War, talks in Serbian Churches and regular attendance at Serbian events such as Folk Fests and picnics. Through the years I have attended as well as organized many events where Colin has spoken about and shared his knowledge of the Serbian people and our history. He has made a name for himself as a friend of the Serbs. It seems to be a fascinating phenomenon to the Serbian people when “a foreigner” takes interest in our culture and history. We hold such individuals in high regard. Colin has certainly attained this status within the Greater Hamilton Serbian community. When his name is mentioned, those who know him, refer to him as the Scottish- Canadian Science teacher, PhD physicist, who is a friend to the Serbian people, and someone who speaks our truth. This time around, this is what he had to say.

SAN:  How did you become interested in Serbian history? /events leading up to the Balkan war?

When I was an undergraduate in my third year of university, I went to South Africa. To my surprise, I found that I connected more with the Boors (the Afrikaners) than the English South Africans. There was a resonance, a connection for me. When I came to Canada, I first went to Montreal and I connected with the French Canadians. I had English friends, however there was a deeper resonance, a deeper empathy with the French. I found the same thing with the Serbs. I just felt more comfortable with the Serbians (more so than English Canadians). Not that there was any discomfort with the Canadians, but there was a familiarity I felt with the Serbs. So trying to generalize this, here is the way I see it. If a culture or a people have their identity threatened, then that identity becomes much more enhanced. The threat comes from the fact that they felt denied for some reason in political expression, and being denied political expression, they turn inwards and become hyper conscious of their own identity, and if their identity can’t be expressed politically, it can be expressed in art, or religion.

Looking inside myself, I would say that’s what happened in my own life as well. I’m Scottish and Scotland is a part of the United Kingdom, but the UK is an English country. It is led by Englishmen, by English culture and the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish are outside the locus of control which is primarily English. There is no direct discrimination against the Scottish, Irish or Welsh people but you are not in charge, and so there is an element of colonialism. Growing up was aware that Scottish culture did not have a place in the political expression of the country where I lived. The culture of the people in the country in which I lived and in which I was a citizen was controlled by the English, and their culture was different. So what the Scottish people have done is what the Serbs do and what the Afrikaners do and what the French Canadians do, is it expressed itself through art and through religion to some extent. Scottish poetry, Robert Burns, bagpipes; all of this kind of stuff is a way a person is Scottish. Although it looks superficial and laughable in some ways because it is a kind of illusion/ a fantasy that lacks real expression.

I think the Afrikaners, the French Canadians and the Serbs from their occupation by the Ottomans, by being misunderstood by the West, they developed the same psychology. I think that’s probably why I resonated with the Serbs and did what I did.

SAN: What role (if any) did your students at the time play in you wanting to further explore Serbian people/history? Do you recall a particular conversation? Event?

I am a physics teacher at a high school in Hamilton, and about 20 years ago, my classes began to fill up with Serbs, who were refugees from the Balkan wars of the 90s. At the time, I knew only two things about the Serbs. One was that the First World War began when the Austrian Archduke was assassinated in Sarajevo by a Bosnian Serb. The other was from Shaw’s play Arms and the Man, where the hero is a soldier in the Serbian army, who keeps chocolate drops instead of bullets in his ammunition pouch.

As I began to get to know them, I found them to be generally tall. Although they all spoke the same language, they used different alphabets and could be Muslim, Catholic, or Orthodox. At least, this is how it seemed to me at the time. Like most refugees, they were sorry a lot, sometimes with only one set of clothes which they washed on the weekend. However, their English was excellent. I found them to be intelligent and hard-working, with a strong sense of family values.

At the time, our press was not being very kind to our newcomers and the bad press resulted in my students being treated very badly by some people. Another moment in particular which has stuck in my mind is a conversation I had with a former Serbian student at the time. She expressed to me how ashamed she was of being Serbian as a result of this bad press Serbians received in the media. I thought nobody should be ashamed of who they are and where they come from. This bothered me so I decided to travel to Serbia to learn a little more about what had happened.

SAN:  What made you rethink the Western narrative about Serbs and made you want to further pursue the topic yourself?

Certainly, when I looked at the facts, I found that there had been injustice done to the Serbian people, and these “facts” had been spun by political interests. To find out genuine facts I explored Serbian history and eventually traveled to Serbia.

Generally, people are not motivated by facts and justice and the international rule of order. People are motivated by that which motivates them (they are motivated by feelings. I felt that the Serbs throughout their history have been blocked from expressing politically their identity. As a result, they’ve become hyper nationalistic, and have retreated into culture and religion. They have been unfairly blocked from expressing at an international level who they are.

This began with the Ottoman occupation, and it has continued. They were demonized by the West and have experienced the kind of conditions that people who have been colonized experience. I’ve met this in South Africa with the Boors, I’ve met it in Canada with the French Canadians, and I grew up with it as a Scottish person in a country that is run by the English. That does not mean that the English exploited us or discriminated against us, it just means that I had to go through an English culture without being able to express a Scottish culture. I think at the moment, Serbia is experiencing the same conflict. If you want to advance politically and economically, you have to join the European Union, and that means sacrificing to some extent. You have to decide if it’s better to be who you are and be impoverished or whether it’s better to sacrifice who you are and be comfortable.

SAN:  As you mentioned, you decided to travel the Balkans to learn more about the Serbs and their role in the Balkan war; what place/country did you visit first?

My first trip through former Yugoslavia was in 2001. I went to Sarajevo and could evidently be seen that there had been a war. There were bullet scars on the buildings and the buildings had been demolished. You could see that the people were very poor, and there were a lot of amputees. It was a war zone at that. From Sarajevo, I made my way to Mostar and saw the Stari Most, and then from there I went down to Dubrovnik, then Kotor then Cetnije then Podgorica. I went to the shrine near Niksic (Sv. Vasilije). Then I ended up in Kosovo, in Pristina. Then I got stuck there, I couldn’t get back because of the political situation. I had wanted to see the site of Kosovo Polje, but nobody would take me there. Finally, I got a cab driver. I noticed a number of NATO flags, the British were there, the French were there, the Germans were there. I saw what was going on, it was occupied, Kosovo was occupied. I finally found a cab driver who would take me to Kosovo Polje. He first took me to a place where I saw a head of Bill Clinton. I said, no no j-e-d-a-n, t-r-i, o-s-a-m, d-e-v-e-t (1389), KOSOVO POLJE. “Ah” he said “Gazimestan.” So we went to Gazimestan, and there was a big Slovak soldier with an AK 47, guarding the monument to the Battle of Kosovo. So I asked if I could go see the monument, and I saw it and took a bunch of photographs. I then asked where we would go next and he said he would take me to Sultan Murat’s tomb. So I went to Murat’s tomb. I was told that I couldn’t go in because I was an infidel, so I just went to the back of the tomb and took some photographs of the back of the building. Then we went back to Pristina to my hotel. I said I have to get back to Belgrade in 3 days time, can I do that? He said he had a friend with a bus and the bus went through all the back streets to get to Belgrade. The bus would make its way to Belgrade at night with the lights turned off. It came time to pay the cab driver. I wasn’t exactly sure how much, so I asked myself how much the experience was worth. I thought, oh I don’t know, maybe 50 euros. This man was so grateful that he started kissing my hand. He’s a Muslim guy you know, he started saying “May Allah bless you and may Allah bless your family.” I said I would like to take advantage of this friend with the bus. He said “Sure, he’ll pick you up at the hotel at 9pm.” I’m thinking I hope to God this guy comes through and sure enough, he showed up. We left Pristina at about 9:30 pm, we took all the backroads and got back to Belgrade at 4 in the morning. So that was my first trip.

My second trip I had to go through Belgrade. This time I wanted to see Croatia. So first, I went to Zagreb. It was very Western. I noticed a number of cement factories. Obviously, cement was needed to rebuild damage from the war. From Zagreb I went down to Split, saw the Dalmatian coast, and came back. Then I went to Knin, where all of my students were from. I saw Croatian flags everywhere, while driving around. I went back to Zagreb and then from there I went to Jasenovac. That was emotional, very very emotional. I went to the huge flower monument. There I read about Petar Brzica who was one of the Croatian Nazis (the Ustase) who massacred Serbs in the concentration camp Jasenovac during WWII. He had a knife that was strapped to his wrist. The Ustase had a competition about who could slaughter the most Serbs, and he “won” the competition, it was worked out that every minute he was killing 3 Serbs. He got a gold cup and a suckling pig was killed in his honour. As I started walking back from the monument, I started thinking about this. How could human beings do this? How could you remain a human being after doing something like this? Then I heard a sort of clacking noise above me. I looked up and there was a mother and father stork and babies. You know this was a symbol of hope. It was a religious experience. So I got back to Belgrade and came home, and then the following year I went to a language school in Valjevo.

SAN:  Why was this information important for you to research and get the truth out there? How did you decide how you will be going about your research? Did you get information simply by speaking with locals? Or did you inquire into other sources?

The idea of Serbs being genocidal, that’s gotten into the textbooks, when students study genocide, they study this. Definitely somebody should be protesting this. Thai is not right. There was General Mackenzie and Joe Bissett, you know, who was the ambassador to Yugoslavia at the time. He’s a vocal opponent of this. Professor Edward Herman, he’s probably the best academic academic reference. He’s dead now, but Herman, he examines the data, and anybody who looks on the internet can see that the Srebrenica narrative is nonsense. As far as I know, Srebrenica was designated as a safe haven. (Halilovic), he was the Muslim Bosnian commander, and General Ratko Mladic was the Serbian commander. They got together and they said, you know this war, the casualties are civilians. Ok, we’re gonna have a war but why do civilians have to pay? They designated the safe haven of Srebrenica. However, it wasn’t a safe haven. Naser Oric, who was a Bosnian commander, used it as a base to kill people in the Serbian villages surrounding Srebrenica, and there were a lot of them! Finally, General Mladic had had enough and decided to take Srebrenica. The story of 8000 people being massacred is not true. What General Mladic did was he set up buses to send Muslim women and children to Muslim designated areas outside, and you don’t do this if you’re planning on committing genocide. A lot of the Muslim soldiers had in fact fled Srebrenica. In Potocari there were some people killed because the bad guys were known to the Serbs, these were Naser Oric’s killers. There were people killed of course, but under the circumstances you wouldn’t call that a war crime. America had fighter planes coming and going, you can’t kill 8000 people and bury them without there being some information. There’s no information, there’s no evidence. There were people killed (as there is in war) but it wasn’t a genocide, and there are a lot of well respected people who will attest to this.

The contention that 8000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys had been executed in Srebrenica does not stand up to scrutiny. The 8000 figure itself was first provided by the Red Cross, based on a rough estimate of 3,000 men captured by the Serb army and 5,000 missing. It is well established that thousands of those counted among the “missing” had escaped to safety and were killed in regular fighting. Impartial observers in Srebrenica, at the time, including the Dutch peacekeepers, saw no massacres. Hubert Weiland, the chief UN investigator of human rights abuses, could find no evidence after 5 years of interrogating 20,000 Srebrenica survivors. Both the size of Muslim casualties at Srebrenica and the context surrounding these events have been and are still being misrepresented in official reports from government, the mainstream media and student university textbooks. It is time for the truth to be told!

SAN: Why do you believe the West villainized the Serbs and presented them as the “bad guys” in the Balkan War?

During the 1980s, Yugoslavia was exposed to a series of Western actions, which destabilized and greatly contributed to the eventual breakup of the country. The Cold War had ended, and Reagan and Thatcher wanted Eastern Europe to join a rule based international system, which was the genesis of the idea of Reaganomics. Most of Eastern European countries were happy to do so, the one country standing in their way was Yugoslavia as it was quite a successful socialist system at the time.

In a 1984 article “US Policy Towards Yugoslavia,” Reagan stated that the goal of US policy was to “integrate the countries of Yugoslavia into market-oriented economies.” At the time, most countries (including Canada) carried large foreign debts. In the 1991 Foreign Appropriations Law, there would be no debt relief, whether by the US, the IMF (International Monetary Fund), or the World Bank, for any country in Yugoslavia which did not declare independence from the Socialist Federal Republic within 8 months. When the Federal Government objected, the IMF restructured the debt and the GDP fell from +6% in 1980 to -10% in 1990. Wages were frozen but prices continued to rise.

For Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher socialist democracy was not real democracy. To them a mixed economy was inferior to a free market one. And so, there began the demonizing of Milosevic and the Serbs. In their view, in the same way that the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were enslaved by Russian communism, the states of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia were enslaved by Yugoslav (later Serbian) communism. Breaking the stranglehold of Yugoslav communism was a moral crusade for Thatcher and Reagan. To achieve this, they employed three strategies.

The first was economic destabilization. This meant increasing interest on foreign debt to ridiculously high levels (18%). When the country could not pay, they offered credit relief with strong strings attached. In this case, debt relief was offered not to the Federal government of Yugoslavia, but to the constituent republics, especially Slovenia and Croatia. This strategy guaranteed the breakup of the country. Slovenia and Croatia were the first two countries that decided they wanted to bail from Yugoslavia. For Thatcher and Regan, if Croats and Slovenians were anti-Milosevic then they must be the good guys, and this is how sides were formed.

The second strategy used was: divide and rule. If the country has internal conflicts, support one faction against the other. Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia were supported against the (allegedly) oppressive Serbian communists of Yugoslavia. Where the separation of Croatia and Slovenia got the real push and support was from Heinz-Dietrich-Genschner who was the foreign minister of Germany at the time. Lord Peter Carrington who was the prime minister of Britain at the time, and the UN secretary general (whose name I can’t remember at the moment) said that if you recognize Croatia and Slovenia, then Bosnian Muslims are going to want the same freedom and half the country is Serbs and if you go ahead you’re going to have a war. Genscher said I don’t care do it. The Brits and the UN actually came out with a plan where half the country would be Serb, and half would be Muslim (referring to Bosnia). This plan was presented in Lisbon. They got the three jack asses together, Tudjman, Izetbegovic, and Milosevic in Lisbon. (I know this is true because I got it from Joe Bisen). Warren Zimmerman was instructed to go to Izetbegovic and said, if you break the agreement, we’ll take care of you, implying they would support him in gaining an independent country. Why would they do this? By that time, they decided they had to pick a side and they decided the Serbs were the bad guys. They were the hold out preventing the economic uniformity of Eastern Europe. They were the holdouts.

The third strategy was to mount a propaganda campaign to persuade the world that Western actions were designed to promote the values of freedom and democracy in the Balkans. In this case, the demonization of communism morphed into a demonization of the Serbs, whose leader Slobodan Milosevic, was a communist but also one trying to protect the Serbs from prosecution from their non-Serb neighbours.

I would just like to add that all this information I am giving you, the locals wouldn’t know. All they knew and know in this moment is that there was a war. Prior to the war, everyone actually got along quite well. Yugoslavia was a melting pot culturally. There was no Serbia, no Croatia, and no Bosnia.

SAN:  How was your research/newly discovered information received in the West? By friends? Colleagues? By Serbs with whom you associate?

People were shocked, they were horrified. People were blown away and were very sympathetic. They felt very bad about what happened. If they were lied to about this, what else were they lied to about? The response from the Serbs was generally positive. Many Serbs said they didn’t want old wounds/history being brought up. My response to this is that this narrative has gone into academic classes, into university classes. This is the “official narrative.” If you don’t know the truth, that'll come back and bite you. It is your responsibility to know what happened and why it really happened.

It isn’t good to be either too quiet or too vocal. Becoming too vocal, you start having “a chip on your shoulder” For example, do Black people have a chip on their shoulder? Well, no, but if they do, it’s understandable, it’s forgivable, but it’s not the way to get things done. The best thing you can do is recognize the fact that these people are misinformed.

SAN: As a Serbian school teacher, I was told by many parents not to “burden their children with the past” for example. What do you think of this?

It would be interesting what Jewish people would say about that. They (a minority) have it all figured out in my opinion. They’re very local and they have the political connections to be able to be vocal. Black Lives Matter is another example, people don’t want to feel guilty. Where you really cross a boundary is where you blame the other for something. For example, from a Black perspective white people don’t have a problem. Where you really cross a boundary is when you blame them, when you hate them for it. Then in turn, all they see is hate coming and they don’t understand what should be done, because in some sense they should take responsibility for not having had the other person’s experience. It ends up being a vicious cycle. I don’t know, there’s no easy answer but it helps at least to see where people are coming from.

Serbian people were mostly glad that I did this research. Again, there was a personal connection. It was a visceral experience that I had, which enabled me to make this connection. I don’t have that type of connection with Black or Jewish people, it’s slightly different.

SAN: Why did it take a Scottish Canadian to do this work and not someone else?

I’m taking a guess here, but I think many other people didn’t want to “rock the boat.” Being Scottish was the same for me, I didn’t want to make a big deal about being Scottish. It’s not going to do me good and I’m not going to go back and fight for Scottish independence. I don’t belong there anymore because I live here.

The feeling of resentment is still there however when I see someone else being treated the way my people were, that way it comes out.

SAN:  I know you continue to be a prominent figure in the Hamilton area fighting for Serbian rights, seeking justice, and promoting Serbian culture, what is it that continues to drive you to do so?

I actually don’t anymore. However, what I do is Tesla, the NTEC. I’m needed, I keep Vic (the president) straight about the technical stuff, as he is not scientific. As for the promotion of Serbian culture, I do it if I am invited. This would be to speak at a Church or something. But yeah, I don’t do it proactively, if I’m invited, I’ll do it.

SAN: How do you get your work out there?

Mainly through Serbian events, in churches or Serbian picnics. I also do it through the Canadian International Council. It’s perfect because it’s focused on Canadians about Canadian international policy, and it tends to reflect the official government policy.

I’ve been to China and given a couple of conferences and I’ve invited the Serbian ambassador, so yeah that’s what I do. Also, I’ve spoken at Anglo Churches a couple of times. That’s about it.

SAN:  Can you tell me about the mission to rename a part of Burlington Street “The Nikola Tesla Expressway.” What was your role in this project? Why was this an important effort for you to take part in?

It goes back to the same thing I talked about before. Tesla had bad press in my opinion. He wasn’t an American. This was a disadvantage as America wants to push their own people. Edison was given preference.

In the classes that I teach I make sure that Tesla gets the credit he deserves. When we were doing the Tesla Expressway, I had a grade 9 class and I assigned them a project where everyone had to research a Tesla invention and do a presentation about it. The students presented these projects in city hall. I think that initially this was a big reason the Tesla Expressway project was passed.

Initially people were saying no to the proposed idea. However, when the kids went forward and did their presentations everything changed. The guy that was the councilman was from the area where our school is. He was the one that proposed the motion and I think what helped the cause was that the kids were from his area.

So you know kids kind of have a way of working out. I don’t think that I’m kind of a proactive advocate, it’s more like things come up and I participate in them. It does go back to my feelings growing up, of being marginalized and such. I don’t like to see it happen to other people. Since the end of the Cold War, I have found American politics to be insensitive and uniformed. Also, I have found English Colonial politics to be insensitive and uninformed. I feel that our fellow citizens the Serbs, deserve our support as they have suffered a great deal.

SAN:  What is your favourite thing/part of Serbian culture?

Serbians have a certain humility and warmth which I like. I am also attracted to the Orthodox view of Christianity. My criticism of Western Christianity is that it is largely intellectual and to some extent also emotional. Whereas the way I find the Orthodox faith is it’s spiritual, and to unpack that is a big deal.

I leave the interview at this point as Colin’s views on the Orthodox faith are quite interesting and detailed and merit an interview all their own. Perhaps that will be another interview for another time.