Scandal in Europe: "Butcher of Bosnia" Mladic buried as a hero in Serbia
Thousands of people have gathered for the “Butcher of Bosnia” Ratko Mladic’s funeral in Belgrade.
The Bosnian Serb general died aged 83 in prison last month while serving a life sentence for genocide for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
Crowds gathered in the Serbian capital on Monday morning, as Brussels accused some in the country of “glorification” of a convicted war criminal.
Mourners streamed into St Luka church to pay their respects, with many kissing Mladic’s closed coffin, as Serbian Orthodox priests read prayers.
Police had closed off streets in the surrounding part of the city as crowds, some wearing shirts praising Mladic, began arriving.
Serbian flags had been hung nearby, and a huge banner unfurled across the street read: “Welcome, General, thanks be to your mother for bearing a hero, so that Serbdom’s glory may return.”
The funeral will start around midday local time.
Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia’s populist president, will not attend because of a prior engagement.
He said the state would ensure that the event would pass “safely”.
“I am here to see off the general, a national hero,” said Radojka Visic, a pensioner who travelled from Bosnia’s Serb entity, Republika Srpska.
“They couldn’t defeat us on the battlefield, so they sent him to prison and tortured him there instead,” she said.
Mladic led the Army of Republika Srpska during the Yugoslav Wars, allying with Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president, and Radovan Karadžić, the former Bosnian Serb leader.
The Bosnian War of 1992-1995 left around 100,000 people dead and 2.2 million displaced.
Mladic ordered the Siege of Sarajevo – the longest in the 20th century – where his forces encircled the Bosnian capital for four years from the surrounding mountains.
He was also responsible for the Srebrenica massacre, Europe’s worst single act of mass killing since the Second World War, when more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed in a United Nations-designated “safe area”, their bodies dumped in mass graves.
After his death in The Hague last month, Mladic’s casket arrived in the country on a government plane, carried by six soldiers and draped in flags.
As it was driven from the airport in a motorcade, groups of young men held banners praising the former general, and some police were seen saluting as it passed.
A Serbian Super League derby between Crvena Zvezda and Partizan began on Sunday with a minute of silence for the convicted general. Red Star Belgrade fans also unveiled a tifo featuring Mladic’s face.
Mladic was arrested in 2011, 16 years after he was first indicted, and sentenced to life in prison in 2021 after a nine-year trial.
He was convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2017.
Before his death, Mladic’s family had appealed for his release because of his failing health. A Hague tribunal had rejected the appeal.
Despite the verdicts, he is still hailed as a hero by some Serbs, particularly in Republika Srpska, where his death was marked with vigils and gatherings.
Darko Mladic, Mladic’s son, who is officially organising the funeral, said he was “proud of the role” his father played.
However, the ceremony has been heavily criticised for “glorifying” Mladic’s actions.
Marta Kos, the EU’s enlargement commissioner, cancelled a forthcoming visit to Serbia on Friday, declaring the “glorification surrounding his death is incompatible with the values on which the EU path is built”.
Serbia has been an EU candidate country since 2012.
Denis Bećirović, the chairman of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, called it “an act of identification by Serbia’s leadership with one of the worst killers in European history”.
“This has unforeseeable consequences for the future of the entire region,” he wrote on social media on Friday.
On Saturday, around 300 people gathered at a commemoration for Mladic at a military facility in Belgrade, organised by an association of retired and active Serbian army generals.
Family members attended, as well as Nenad Vujic, the Serbian justice minister and officials from Republika Srpska, including Sinisa Karan, the president.
Speakers at the ceremony praised Mladic’s actions, describing him as a “towering figure both as a man and a soldier”.
Politics Editor
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