Only the power of murderous nationalist propaganda can declare as a hero the man responsible for the death of around 11.000 people during the siege of Sarajevo, including 1601 children, as well as for the liquidation of more than 8.000 disarmed Bosniak prisoners in Srebrenica. General Ratko Mladić, commander of the Republika Srpska Army and a man convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, died as one of the last great symbols of the Bosnian war. His death is a dangerous reminder of how cancerous the level of inter-ethnic hatred is in the region and how many citizens of Serbia are not ready to face the documented crimes he committed while posing as the protector of Serbia. During the first years of the war, I went to Bosnia several times to report on the war and peace negotiations. I hitchhiked from Zvornik to Banja Luka, rode on the hood of a military "fap" and passed through the ruins of Derventa, the likes of which I have never seen even in the south of Lebanon. I remember the RS Assembly in Pale in 1993, when Mladić, together with Radovan Karadžić, played a key role in rejecting the Vance-Owen plan, which could have shortened the war.
photo: Emil Vaš1994.
I held to the standards of the profession learned during the conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan. I have never agreed to "patriotic journalism" because it easily sacrifices the truth for the sake of "higher goals" dictated to some journalists by politicians or generals.
One day in the fall of 1993, I was sitting in "Majestik" with an acquaintance whom I knew had shady connections with the army and services. He introduced me to Captain Dragan Vasiljković. Then he called someone with a still very rare mobile phone and during the conversation found it necessary to say that he was sitting with Boško Jakšić.
The one on the other end of the line apparently said, "Give it to me." I picked up my cell phone and was bombarded with the worst curse words. "If I didn't see you again in Bosnia", he concluded and hung up. "Who was that?" I asked my acquaintance in confusion. He answered me: "Ratko Mladić."
I am not a revolutionary, nor do I gamble with my life. I was aware that the lord of life and death on the other side of the Drina could easily see to it that I disappeared.
photo: Emil VašPROPAGANDA AND SELF-PROMOTING: Mladić with R. Karadžić...
PIONEER "OF THE SERBIAN WORLD"
Mladić, both as an officer of the JNA and as the commander of the 9th Corps of the JNA based in Knin, had a reputation as a cruel and insensitive man, which he would morbidly confirm in the small mining town in the east of Bosnia - Srebrenica.
Through the fate of the general, the essence of the relationship of the state of Serbia towards the crimes of the last wars, the (non-existent) reconciliation in the region, recent history and the role of individual Serbs in its darkest episodes has been refracted for a long time.
It's not just about dealing with the past, as is often heard. Everyone faces the past, only some in one way and others in another way. It also affects the official policy, which has committed itself in various ways not to protect war criminals. That obligation is constantly undermined.
There is no room for surprise here - the current government is the same one that, with its policy in the 1990s, created guardians of the heroic flame of Ratko Mladić. Hate speech is being marketed. Aleksandar Vulin openly declared that he cared more about Ratko Mladić than Nataša Kandić.
It remains for the modern public to answer the question of how, over the course of three decades, Mladić shaped Serbian society to such an extent and acquired an almost mythical aura of a hero. It remains for historians to find an answer to the question of how Mladić knew that on July 10 and 11, 1995, he could freely enter Srebrenica, an enclave under the protection of Dutch forces from the UN corps.
Then he led the Dutch commander into the room where the pig was slaughtered. "This is how we treat our enemies," Mladić told him.
How did he know that earlier that year the presidents of the USA and France and the prime minister of Britain made a secret agreement that their air forces would not defend Srebrenica?
Mladić was a pioneer of the "Serbian world and one of its founders", only that project is better known under the name "Greater Serbia". As a military instrument of a political project, over the years he became an icon of Great Serbian nationalism, a general who defended Serbia under the same cap as Duke Stepa Stepanović, a martyr who was a victim of Belorussian conspiracies.
"The Serbian people, neither their country, nor their army, we do not have a single soldier and a single unit on any foreign land. Not even in any foreign country," said Mladić. "All our soldiers, officers and non-commissioned officers are in their own country. We are defending it from our common enemy, the Croatian-Muslim coalition and their mediators from some Islamic and Western countries."
In the end, he ended up as a man found guilty of genocide in Srebrenica, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war during the 1992-1995 conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Hague Tribunal, a UN court, sentenced him to life imprisonment in 2017. The appeals panel of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Courts, the legal successor of the Hague Tribunal, upheld the verdict in June 2021.
In the post-war years, the chance for the public of Serbia to be familiar with everything that happened in Bosnia during the war was systematically missed. There were "their" but not "our" crimes. The fatal silence and unwillingness to face the full truth reappeared as a haunting specter.
Back in 2007, Aleksandar Vučić provocatively painted over the sign Zoran Đinđić Boulevard with a Ratko Mladić Boulevard poster. In March 2010, the Assembly of Serbia, at the proposal of the Democratic Party, adopted the Declaration on Condemnation of the Crime in Srebrenica, which refers to the verdict of the International Court of Justice, which determined that genocide was committed in Srebrenica, but the text condemns the crime in the manner determined by the verdict of the aforementioned court, without mentioning the term genocide.
The opposition at the time accused the supporters of the Declaration of betraying Serbia and the Serbian people, and a solid foundation was laid for disputing the genocide. As then, so today.
The authorities issue indulgences to crime. They create enraged people whose reason has been destroyed by nationalism after a lobotomy. The generations that have come have not been taught anything. Many young people under the influence of indoctrination live in the belief that their hero-general is not responsible for the slaughter in eastern Bosnia, for the 1.425-day siege of Sarajevo, the taking of UN members as hostages, for ethnic cleansing, mass expulsions, the demolition of hundreds of mosques, looting, rape, concentration camps and finally for the genocide in Srebrenica.
They cheered for Mladić in European and domestic stadiums, the last time at the visit of "Red Star" in Pilsen, when the fans held up a large banner that read: "General, great glory and thanks". UEFA initiated disciplinary proceedings. The fans of Radnički from Niš, the "meraklije", held up a banner on the stand: "As long as the Serbs exist, your name will be celebrated!"
Let's remember how right-wingers dear and loyal to Vučić's regime kept a dead watch next to the mural in the middle of Belgrade's Vračar, which read: "General, thank your mother". Captain Dragan founded a foundation in Banja Luka to help "imprisoned Serbian heroes who are in prisons all over the world just because they defended Serbian interests, wearing Serbian uniforms and fighting under the Serbian flag."
photo: Emil Vaš…and Patriarch Pavle
REACTIONS AND DIVISIONS
In May 2024, Vučić pathetically and defiantly wrapped himself in the Serbian flag in the UN building in New York in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the passing of a resolution on Srebrenica, one of the darkest chapters in Europe after the Second World War, on genocide committed in the name of the ideology advocated by General Mladić.
When the UN, at the same session, proclaimed July 11 as the International Day of Remembrance of Srebrenica and threatened all those who deny the genocide, Vučić started with a conspiracy theory that the intention was to declare the Serbs a genocidal nation - which is more than false. It is not written anywhere, no one has stated it because the responsibility for crimes is individual and not collective.
The Government of Serbia adopted the National Strategy for the Prosecution of War Crimes in Serbia from 2021 to 2026, but failed the exam again, challenging the decisions of the Hague Tribunal and allowing various manifestations of idolatry to General Mladić.
Bosnia and Herzegovina still lives in a contradiction called peace, so the reactions to Mladić's death differ dramatically in the Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Confirming the depth of divisions within Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bakir Izetbegović, president of the Democratic Action Party, said:
"The young man died, but the consequences of his crimes are still alive. They are present in families who are still searching for the remains of their loved ones, in returnees who are still fighting for their rights, in cities and villages that are still recovering from the destruction, but also in attempts to deny genocide, glorify war criminals and relativize historical facts."
Several hundred people gathered with torches in Visegrad and Lukovica. Several thousand were in Pale, as well as in Zvornik, so that the Serbs would honor him. "Vojvode", fans of Doboj's "Sloga", raised a slogan that read: "Vojvode are the army of the Generals". In some Orthodox churches and monasteries, a memorial service was held, and in the church in Banja Luka, Milorad Dodik, the same one who long ago demanded that Mladić be arrested and tried, attended the service.
Member of the BiH Presidency Željka Cvijanović said that it is difficult for her to escape the impression that Mladić's death was "the result of extremely inhumane treatment of a seriously ill person", describing him as a commander who "in the most difficult period stood at the head of the glorious Army of the RS, which defended the people and the borders of our Republic". The mayor of Banja Luka, Draško Stanivuković, mourned.
CALCULATIONS FOR DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN USE
Mladić's death served in Serbia as a new opportunity for a bizarre interpretation of reality and an anti-Western narrative. A large part of the regime celebrates Mladić for rehabilitating his own war and political path. Vučić waited an unusually long time to announce the news of the general's death, which happened at an inconvenient moment before the elections. While the official position regarding the funeral was calculated, he balanced.
photo: darko bandić / ap photoPOTOČARI: Victims from Srebrenica
Today, he would say that pasting the posters belongs to the time of his radical youth, but he still persistently does not admit that genocide was committed in Srebrenica. He knows that praising the general would help him with the voters he intends to bring from Republika Srpska, but he is aware that public expression of personal feelings would be inappropriate.
He did not mention his former "hero", he did not mention the genocide, but he did not fail to accuse The Hague of "anti-civilizational behavior" because he did not allow Mladic to spend his last days in Serbia. "They wanted him dead behind bars."
Calibrating his response, Vučić said that he was "disgusted" by the behavior of the "star" in the Czech Republic and that reconciliation with the Bosniaks must be worked on, and then he did not fail to say that General Rasim Delić, "whose soldiers cut off the heads of Serbs", was buried in Bosnia and Herzegovina with full state honors.
Vučić carefully listens to the voices outside. If the Russians are excluded, everyone else has warned that this is not an opportunity to glorify crimes. The European Commission said that the glorification of war criminals has no place either in the European Union or in the candidate countries for membership. Justice Minister Nenad Vujić hastened to declare that Mladić will be buried "with full state and military honors" and in compliance with "standard protocols provided for generals". However, state honors to Mladić would be a memorable slap in the face of all reconciliation efforts in the region, so the minister was a little down to earth.
And so, while Belgrade is waiting for an investigation into the death to be carried out in The Hague as soon as possible so that the family can take possession of the body, the story of a "dignified" send-off has been activated, in accordance with Mladić's desire to be buried next to his daughter Ana, a medical student who tragically ended her life by suicide in 1994.
IS THERE AN END?
Ratko Mladić did not have the courage to face his (mis)deeds. Kukavički hid for 16 years before he was found on May 26, 2011 in the village of Lazarevo near Zrenjanin, where he was hiding with his uncle and using the name Milorad Komadić.
He was extradited to the Hague Tribunal on May 31, 2011, and since then the myth of his heroism and martyrdom has been building. The dangerous denial or minimization of guilt continues. Elementary moral values are seriously disturbed.
For the sake of mental and moral hygiene of the nation, it is necessary to face the dark sides of the past. There are many people in Serbia, as well as in the Republika Srpska, who have been openly opposing nationalism for years, admitting the facts of wars and often paying for it.
When the general is buried, the memory will not fade. The only question is what kind of memory. Unfortunately, those who believe that this is the last chance for the figure of Ratko Mladic to freely float around Serbian countries, recruiting nationalists and disturbing all those who wonder how far the official government in Belgrade will benevolently patronize extremists, are mistaken.
Let's not fool ourselves. People who mourn their hero today know very well who and what they are celebrating. The fatal radiation continues. That is why society in Serbia looks like this today. If it weren't for Mladic, we wouldn't have denial of crimes and responsibility, denial of crimes, destabilization of the region, quarrels with neighbors...
"Convincing us that, instead of the truth, we once again choose a lie as the highest step of our collective amnesia", writes Đorđe Krajišnik in "Oslobođenje".
War criminals should be placed in the places they chose in history. The future belongs to those who survived Mladić and must not be held hostage by the defense of failed and criminal projects from the past.
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