BELGRADE – Thousands of people gathered in front of a church in Belgrade to pay tribute to former Serbian-Bosnian general Ratko Mladic, who died last week while serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Mladic remains a revered figure among many Serbs in Serbia and in the Bosnian Serb Republic, despite his convictions related to his role in the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 and the siege of Sarajevo.
People carrying Serbian flags and photos of Mladic wearing a traditional Serbian military cap arrived in front of the church to light candles on Monday morning, hours before the scheduled burial.
Free bus services were offered from Bosnia and from most cities in Serbia for those who wished to pay their respects.
Mladic’s casket was displayed inside the church, and six men, mostly war veterans from Serbia and Bosnia, took turns guarding it. Mladic’s wife, son and grandchildren remained inside the church to receive condolences.
“Time will tell; time is the best judge, which will show what kind of person is who and for whom,” said Jovan Vincic, a Belgrade resident who had gone to the church.
The motive behind the conflicts
The death of Mladic sparked strong emotions related to the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the ethnic conflicts that followed in the Balkans.
Mladic was found guilty by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia of genocide for his role in the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, in which about 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed after Bosnian Serb forces invaded the UN-designated enclave.
He was also convicted for the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, during which about 10,000 people were killed.
Last week, the European Union’s Enlargement Commissioner, Marta Kos, postponed her visit to Serbia due to what she called the “glorification” of Mladic after his death, including the use of a government plane to fly him back to Serbia.
The Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, rejected these statements but did not say whether he would attend the funeral on Monday.
The ceremony was scheduled to be led by the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church at noon; afterward, Mladic would be buried in a nearby cemetery beside his daughter, who died in 1994.
Meanwhile, in Sarajevo, the funeral rekindled painful memories of the war.
“It’s really horrible that this is happening there (in Belgrade), because I know there are ordinary people who are against it,” said Zdravka Gvozdjar, a retired pharmacist whose 9-year-old son was killed during the Sarajevo siege by a grenade launched by forces led by Mladic, one of more than 1,000 children killed in the city.
“Mladic… only deserved to be erased from memory forever, not to be promoted as a hero,” she said. “He should be remembered only as a butcher.”
