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The state-honoured funeral of Ratko Mladic in Belgrade has triggered strong criticism from EU officials over the glorification of a convicted war criminal responsible for the Srebrenica massacre and the siege of Sarajevo.
A funeral procession for former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic unfolded in Belgrade, Serbia, on Monday, drawing international condemnation amid a lavish display of military honours for a general convicted of orchestrating the worst massacre in Europe since the Second World War.
Known widely as the Butcher of Bosnia for his role during the Balkans genocide in the 1990s, Mladic died in prison in late August at the age of 84, while serving a life sentence for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Despite his conviction, Mladic remained a deeply revered figure among many Serbians, including segments of the political establishment, and his coffin was transported to Serbia aboard a government aircraft.
The casket was draped in national flags and carried from the plane by uniformed soldiers, while crowds gathered along roadsides to display banners honouring the late commander. On Monday, thousands of people assembled in front of a small church in the Serbian capital to pay their final respects. Armed forces stood guard at the casket, which was topped with Mladic's signature military hat and a ceremonial sword, with a display of medals arranged in front.
Outside the church, Serbian flags adorned the surrounding area, and a massive banner stretched across the street read: Welcome, General, thanks be to your mother for bearing a hero. These scenes of military pomp have drawn sharp criticism from the European Union's enlargement commissioner, Marta Kos, who cancelled a forthcoming visit to Serbia on Friday in response. The return of his remains to Belgrade reminds Europe of the darkest pages in our recent history, she declared on social media.
Serbia has been negotiating EU accession since 2014, but the process has stalled in recent years under the populist Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić. The glorification surrounding death is incompatible with the values on which the EU path is built, Kos asserted, adding that the path requires confronting the past, genuine reconciliation and respecting the victims of war crimes.
An EU spokesperson reinforced this warning on Monday, stating that 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. Mladić was one of the main architects of the policy of ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian war, which killed more than 100,000 people and displaced over 2 million.
Among his most notorious crimes was the 1,460-day siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, during which the civilian population endured daily shelling and sniper attacks from Serb nationalist forces, resulting in more than 10,000 deaths. The three-year conflict reached its grim climax with the 1995 killing of at least 8,000 Bosniak Muslims in the town of Srebrenica, a crime that shocked European governments long committed to preventing mass atrocities following the horrors of the Nazi genocide.
In Srebrenica, Mladic's forces were filmed distributing sweets to children and promising safe passage before rounding up and executing thousands of Bosnian men and boys, whose bodies were bulldozed into mass graves. The massacre has been widely regarded as a profound international failure, particularly because Srebrenica had been designated a safe haven under UN protection.
Mladić was arrested in Serbia in 2011 after 16 years as a fugitive and was sentenced by a UN tribunal in the Netherlands to life imprisonment in 2017. According to the ICTY, the Serbian leadership tasked Mladić with implementing the forcible expulsion of Bosnian Muslims, Croats and other non-Serbs to clear Bosnian territory for the creation of a greater Serbia. The Balkans war began following the June 1991 break-up of Yugoslavia, when Slovenia and Croatia declared independence.
Bosnian Serbs quickly seized control of more than two-thirds of Bosnia and initiated the siege of Sarajevo. After three years of bloodshed, the Dayton agreement was signed in Ohio, ending the war and establishing the independent state of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Ratko Mladic Belgrade Srebrenica EU Condemnation Bosnian War
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