\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTatjana \u0110or\u0111evi\u0107<\/a>
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\n\t\t\t\tHot Topics<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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Graffiti of Ratko Mladi\u0107. Photo: Tatjana \u0110or\u0111evi\u0107<\/p>\n
There is an abandoned agricultural warehouse in Kravica, a few kilometres from Srebrenica. Outside, a starving dog on a chain guards what was once a crime scene. On July 13th and 14th 1995, members of the Bosnian Serb army and police shot and killed between 1,000 and more than 1,300 Bosniak men and boys inside and around this former agricultural cooperative. The youngest victim was only 12. There is no memorial plaque here.<\/p>\n
Kravica lies in Republika Srpska, the Serb-majority entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The massacre was one of the first mass executions following the fall of Srebrenica and formed part of the genocide in which more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed. The forces responsible were commanded by General Ratko Mladi\u0107.<\/p>\n
Mladi\u0107 died on August 27th this year, at the age of 84, after a long illness, in the prison hospital in The Hague, where he was serving a life sentence. The former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska had been definitively convicted in 2021 of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. His death has reopened a question that, after international courts established the facts and handed down their verdicts, should hardly need to be asked: was Ratko Mladi\u0107 a war criminal or a national hero?<\/p>\n
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The abandoned farm warehouse in Kravica, one of the sites of Mladi\u0107\u2019s genocide. Photo: Tatjana \u0110or\u0111evi\u0107<\/p>\n
In Serbia and Republika Srpska, the answer remains deeply contested. Politicians, pro-government media, nationalist organisations and citizens mourned his death and celebrated him as a hero. According to a 2025 Valicon survey,<\/strong><\/a> 52 per cent of Serbs questioned in Republika Srpska regarded Mladi\u0107 as a hero. Memorial gatherings were organised in Banja Luka, Doboj, Zvornik, Bratunac and even Srebrenica.<\/p>\n Bosnia and Herzegovina\u2019s Prosecutor\u2019s Office, meanwhile, launched investigations into senior Republika Srpska officials over the glorification of the convicted general, including former Republika Srpska president and current SNSD leader Milorad Dodik.<\/p>\n There should be little ambiguity about the historical record. On July 11th 1995, as his troops entered Srebrenica, Mladi\u0107 himself declared in front of television cameras: \u201cHere we are, on July 11th 1995, in Serbian Srebrenica. On the eve of another great Serbian holiday, we give this town to the Serbian people. And finally, the time has come to take revenge on the Turks in this region.\u201d<\/p>\n What followed is now part of the judicial record of genocide. Yet Serbia has decided that Mladi\u0107 should be buried with military and state honours. Justice Minister Nenad Vuji\u0107 said that because Mladi\u0107 had been a general, the appropriate protocols would be observed and that Belgrade was prepared to receive his body.<\/p>\n Serbian President Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107 went further. He attacked the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, which inherited the remaining functions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, for having refused previous requests to release Mladi\u0107 on health grounds.<\/p>\n \u201cThey did not want the general to die in Serbia, to die where he wanted to,\u201d Vu\u010di\u0107 said, describing the decision as \u201cuncivilised\u201d. He also recalled that Mladi\u0107 had wanted to be buried next to his daughter Ana.<\/p>\n Ana Mladi\u0107 was 23 years old and a promising medical student in Belgrade when she took her own life in March 1994, using her father\u2019s favourite pistol. Her death has remained one of the most tragic episodes in the Mladi\u0107 family history. Mladi\u0107 himself never accepted that she had committed suicide, arguing instead that she had been killed by his political enemies or western intelligence services.<\/p>\n There is a bitter contradiction in invoking military honours around a man whose name is inseparable from Srebrenica and the 1,425-day siege of Sarajevo. During his trial in The Hague, Mladi\u0107 repeatedly provoked victims and survivors rather than confronting the crimes for which he would ultimately be convicted.<\/p>\n But the issue today is larger than Mladi\u0107 himself. His death has once again revealed the persistence of a political culture in which a convicted perpetrator can be transformed into a victim, and a war criminal into a national symbol. Perhaps this is Mladi\u0107\u2019s most disturbing legacy: his ability to survive politically and symbolically not only his conviction, but even his own death. That legacy also reaches a generation that was not yet born when the Bosnian war began.<\/p>\n Serbia\u2019s student protest movement<\/a>, which has challenged Vu\u010di\u0107\u2019s rule for almost two years, is itself divided over Mladi\u0107. Many students have condemned him, but nationalist students \u2013 including young Serbs from Republika Srpska studying in Belgrade \u2013 publicly mourned his death. Graffiti praising Mladi\u0107 appeared across Belgrade. On Branko\u2019s Bridge, young people unfurled a huge banner bearing his image in military uniform and the words: \u201cOur freedom lives through your struggle.\u201d This division matters because Serbia is approaching one of its most uncertain elections in years.<\/p>\n Vu\u010di\u0107 has announced early parliamentary elections October 18th or 25th, amid speculation that he could return to government as prime minister. The vote comes after almost two years of protests triggered by the collapse of the railway station canopy in Novi Sad in November 2024, which ultimately killed 16 people.<\/p>\n What began as a demand for accountability over the disaster developed into a broader revolt against corruption, institutional opacity and Vu\u010di\u0107\u2019s system of power. A CRTA<\/a> poll conducted between June<\/a> 10th and 24th showed how competitive the election could become: among voters who had already made \u00a0up their minds, a student-backed list stood at 44.9 per cent, compared with 35.7 per cent for Vu\u010di\u0107\u2019s Serbian Progressive Party.<\/p>\n It is here that Mladi\u0107\u2019s death moves from the politics of memory into electoral politics. Vu\u010di\u0107 knows the power of nationalism in Serbia. By shifting attention from the crimes for which Mladi\u0107 was convicted to the way he was treated in The Hague, he revives a familiar narrative: Serbia as the victim of an unjust West and of international justice.<\/p>\n That message could help mobilise nationalist voters who have moved closer to the protests or who accuse Vu\u010di\u0107 himself of failing to defend Serbian national interests strongly enough. Mladi\u0107\u2019s death therefore gives Vu\u010di\u0107 an opportunity to return the political debate to terrain he has navigated for decades: nationalism, Kosovo, relations with the West, the wars of the 1990s and the persistent idea of Serbia as a country unfairly accused and humiliated by the international community.<\/p>\n Mladi\u0107 alone will not determine the election. But in a contest that may be far closer than previous ones, mobilising even part of the nationalist electorate could matter. And this may be the real political significance of Ratko Mladi\u0107\u2019s death.<\/p>\n The question is not only how Serbia chooses to bury him, but what it is willing to bury with him: historical revisionism and denial, or the possibility of finally confronting the past. For now, there is little reason for optimism.<\/p>\n More than 30 years after the war, the past is still not simply the past. It can return in an election campaign, divide a new generation and once again become an instrument for political power. Ratko Mladi\u0107 is dead. The nationalism that made him a hero to so many is not.<\/p>\n Tatjana \u0110or\u0111evi\u0107<\/strong> is the chairperson of the Foreign Press Association in Milan and a journalist, writing for Al Jazeera Balkans, BBC News, Portal Novosti and La Stampa.<\/p>\n \n\t\t
\n\t\tAleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107<\/a>, Bosnia and Herzegovina<\/a>, Ratko Mladi\u0107<\/a>, Serbia<\/a>, Srebrenica<\/a>\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Serbia and Republika Srpska, politicians, pro-government media, nationalist organisations and citizens mourned the death of Ratko Mladi\u0107,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1185699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[6502,46246,2000,299,5187,321476,6567,321477],"class_list":["post-1185698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-aleksandar-vucic","tag-bosnia-and-herzegovina","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-ratko-mladic","tag-serbia","tag-srebrenica"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117211865238053145","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1185698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1185699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1185698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1185698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1185698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}