The death of Ratko Mladic once again highlights the still open wounds of the wars that accompanied the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. Known as the “Butcher of the Balkans,” the former general died in The Hague, where he was serving a life sentence.
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On Thursday night, spontaneous demonstrations were held in his honor. In Zvornik, Bosnia-Herzegovina, about 300 people marched through the city center chanting Mladic’s name. In Serbia, several dozen supporters lit flares and hung a portrait of him on a bridge in the urban center.
The controversy grew even more when Serbia’s Minister of Justice, Nenad Vujic, confirmed that the former general will receive “all the military and state honors to which he is entitled.” Serbian authorities now expect the competent bodies in The Hague to inform them when the body will be handed over to organize the funeral.
The reaction from civil society organizations was immediate. The Academy for the Promotion of Democracy, a Serbian NGO, called the initiative shameful and scandalous, stating that it shows that power has not renounced a genocidal ideology. For the Women in Black movement, the state and society are preparing to pay tribute to the person responsible for a genocide.
Criticism has also multiplied outside Serbia. In Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, various non-governmental organizations demand an unequivocal condemnation from Serbian authorities and even propose expelling the Serbian ambassador if these funerals, not yet officially confirmed, take place.
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Mladic embodied, along with former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and the former political leader of the Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadzic, one of the most representative figures of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. The Bosnia conflict, between 1992 and 1995, left nearly 100,000 dead and caused the displacement of about 2.2 million people.
His name became forever associated with the Srebrenica massacre, considered at the time the worst killing committed in Europe since World War II. In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb forces under his command executed around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and teenagers who had taken refuge in that enclave, which was then under United Nations protection.
Gravely ill for several months, Mladic died just a few days after the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals rejected a request submitted by his family and supported by the Serbian government to transfer him to a military hospital in Belgrade where he could receive medical treatment.
