Thousands of people gathered in Belgrade for the funeral of Ratko Mladić, the former Bosnian Serb military commander convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Mladić died aged 84 while serving a life sentence in a United Nations prison in The Hague. He was convicted of genocide for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which around 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys were killed. The massacre has been described as Europe’s worst atrocity since the Second World War.
Large crowds gathered outside St Luka church, where Mladić’s coffin lay in state before the burial. Many attendees were army veterans, and some wore Serbian flags bearing his image. Free buses were organised from towns across Serbia and from Bosnia for people who wanted to attend.
Several Serbian government ministers attended events linked to the funeral, according to local media cited in the report. The funeral service was led by Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Porfirije, who said Mladić’s name would remain in the memory and prayers of many Serbian Orthodox people.
The European Union condemned what it called the “glorification” of Mladić. In a statement, it said that glorifying war criminals, denying genocide and revising history were incompatible with European values and had no place in the EU or its candidate countries. Serbia has been an EU candidate since 2012, although membership talks have recently stalled.
Mladić commanded Bosnian Serb forces during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. His forces besieged Sarajevo, where more than 10,000 people died, and carried out what became known as ethnic cleansing in an effort to forcibly expel non-Serbs from parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
He was arrested in 2011, 16 years after he was first indicted, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2021 following a nine-year trial.
Despite his conviction, Mladić remains a revered figure among many Serbian nationalists, particularly in Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb entity. His death prompted vigils there, and supporters of Red Star Belgrade displayed an image of him at a football match before the funeral.
For victims and survivors, however, the funeral revived painful memories of the war. Zdravka Gvozdjar, a Sarajevo resident whose nine-year-old son was killed by forces led by Mladić during the city’s siege, told Reuters that it was “really horrible” that the funeral was taking place in Belgrade.
Daniella Peled, editor at the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, said Mladić remained a symbol of national pride and defiance for many because Serbian media and education had not reflected the full scale of his crimes or the experiences of victims and survivors.
