Thousands of people have turned out in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, to attend the funeral of the convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić. Widely known as the Butcher of Bosnia, Mladić died at the age of 84 while serving a life sentence in the UN prison in The Hague, the Netherlands. He was found guilty of genocide by a UN war crimes tribunal for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, when around 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys were killed. It was described as Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two.
A Serbian government minister had initially said that Mladić would be given a state funeral but those plans were changed after objections from some European leaders. On Monday, the EU denounced Mladić’s “glorification”. “Ratko Mladić was a convicted war criminal who had committed war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity,” the EU said in a statement. “Any glorification of war criminals, genocide denial and revisionism contradict the most fundamental European values and have no place in the EU or in EU candidate countries,” the statement said.
Serbia has been a candidate to join the EU since 2012, even though membership talks have recently stalled. Ratko Mladić commanded Bosnian Serb forces in the 1990s against the Bosnian Croat and Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) armies. During the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, his troops committed what became known as “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia-Herzegovina in a bid to expel the non-Serbian population by force. They besieged the capital city of Sarajevo, with the deaths of more than 10,000 people.
Mladić was arrested in 2011, 16 years after he was first indicted, and sentenced to life in prison in 2021 after a nine-year trial. Despite his conviction for genocide, Mladić remains a national figure perceived by many Serbs as a heroic defender of the nation. Many Serb nationalists see him as a hero and protector, particularly in the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska, where his death sparked vigils. Several Serbian government ministers joined the crowds paying tribute outside the church where Mladić lay in state before the burial, including the Defence Minister Bratislav Gašić, and the Minister of Justice Nenad Vujić, local media reported.
The funeral service was led by the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije, who said Mladić’s name would remain “deeply etched in the memory and prayers of the majority of our Serbian Orthodox people, who feel and nurture a deep sense of gratitude towards him”. Early in the day, long queues formed outside the small St Luka church, as people waited to go in and pay their respects to the coffin. Many of those in the crowds were army veterans and some men were draped in flags printed with his picture on. Crowds arrived several hours before the funeral began to light candles outside the church, accompanied by a choir on a loudspeaker in the sunshine.
Inside the church, Mladić’s coffin was guarded by several men, mainly war veterans, while his wife, son, and grandchildren stood inside receiving condolences. In a sign of the reverence held for the former general, his coffin was flown back to Serbia last week on a government plane, and was carried from the plane by six soldiers and draped in flags. Free bus services were organised from Bosnia and most towns in Serbia for anyone who wanted to pay their respects. On Sunday night, fans of the Serbian football club Red Star Belgrade unveiled a display of Mladic before their derby win over Partizan Belgrade.
For others, the funeral has rekindled painful memories of the war. A woman in Sarajevo called Zdravka Gvozdjar – whose nine-year-old son was killed by Mladić-led forces during the siege of the city – told Reuters news agency it was “really horrible” that the funeral was taking place in Belgrade. Mladić “deserved to be erased from memory for good, not to be… promoted as a hero,” she said. “He should be remembered only as a butcher.” Thousands attended the funeral because he “remains a figure of national pride and defiance,” said Daniella Peled, Editor at the Institute of War and Peace Reporting NGO – who covered Mladić’s war crimes trial in detail.
The war crimes tribunal “provided an incredibly detailed historical record of Mladić’s crimes,” she told the BBC, but the Serbian media and education system “has not reflected the true scale of his crimes or the perspectives of victims and survivors.” Pro-government Serbian media “depict him as a loyal soldier who simply carried out his duties,” Peled said. “It’s extremely challenging for post-conflict societies to undertake a national reckoning or acknowledge responsibility for the crimes of the past.” The monstrous crimes of Ratko Mladic, the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’ Allan Little: I met dangerously fanatical Mladić early in Bosnian war ‘We’re worried about our future’: Srebrenica massacre’s tensions still felt 30 years on
