Thousands gathered in Belgrade on September 7, 2026, to attend the funeral with state honors of Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb army commander convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Praising Mladic amounts to endorsing the mass murder of thousands, raising troubling questions about the Serbian state’s decision to organize such a tribute. For three decades, international humanitarian law has sought to hold war criminals accountable, yet leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump demonstrate that political figures continue to initiate devastating conflicts without learning from international justice. While the 1990s Balkan wars were comparatively smaller in scale, Mladic’s actions—including the siege of Sarajevo and the slaughter of more than 8,000 men and boys in Srebrenica—remain completely unjustifiable. Past slogans of ‘brotherhood and unity’ in the former Yugoslavia vanished once political manipulation took hold, proving how ordinary individuals can be driven by leaders into becoming killers. Ultimately, Mladic will be remembered as a war criminal, and those who publicly mourn him participate in an event that has no place in a civilized society.
Source: aljazeera.com
