AP —
The body of Ratko Mladic, a Bosnian Serb commander who died while serving a life sentence for war crimes, was laid to rest in a state-run state house on Monday as Serbia ignored European Union warnings not to allow public mourning for the continent’s first genocide convict since World War II.
Thousands of mourners arrived early in the morning at Belgrade’s small Serbian Orthodox Church of St. Luke to pay their respects to Mladic, who is still considered a hero by many Serbs. His military officer’s hat and saber were placed on top of the coffin, flanked by men in military uniform.
Serbian pro-government media reported that Mladic would receive full military honors and that the Serbian Orthodox Church’s Patriarch Porfirige would preside over his funeral.
Milan Dobrić, a mourner who came from Kosovo for the funeral, said Mladic was a man who “dedicated his whole life to the Serbian people.” “I’m glad people came out to pay their special respects this morning.”
Mladic died on August 27, at the age of 84, in The Hague, Netherlands, while serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by his military during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.
Funeral arrangements were officially made by Mladic’s family, but the Serbian government last week sent a plane to take his remains to Belgrade, where soldiers carried his coffin wrapped in the national flag. A military commemoration ceremony was held on Saturday at the official venue of the Serbian army.
President Aleksandar Vucic, a former ultra-nationalist and populist who supported Serbia’s expansionist policies during the war, said the funeral was an “outpouring of emotions” and “has nothing to do with whether Vucic had forgiven anything.”
Serbia is a candidate for membership in the European Union, but has come under heavy criticism for praising Mladic since his death.
EU enlargement commissioner Marta Kos canceled a planned trip to Serbia to protest, arguing that “the glorification of his death is incompatible with the values that are the basis of the EU’s path.”
Serbia, which supported Bosnian Serb forces during the war, remains defiant about its wartime role and accuses Western countries of anti-Serb bias.
“We (Serbs) have been persecuted and harassed for 30, 40 years…no matter what happens, we are always guilty,” Vučić said. He added: “People won’t accept it anymore.”
Mr Vucic, who did not attend the funeral, had previously accused Mr Kos of “lying”. Serbia’s president has stepped up his anti-Western rhetoric ahead of early parliamentary elections scheduled for next month.
In addition to regional leaders and relatives of Mladic’s victims of the Bosnian war, many other European officials also joined in criticizing Serbia. The conflict left more than 100,000 people dead and more than 1 million homeless before it ended with a U.S.-brokered peace deal in 1995.
Mladic was convicted in 2017 of orchestrating the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995. and other war crimes, including the years-long siege of Bosnia’s capital, Sarajevo, and the establishment of concentration camps for captured non-Serb civilians and enemy soldiers.
Since Mladic’s death, his nationalists have held a vigil in Belgrade, painted a series of murals depicting his portrait, and lit smoke bombs in his honor. On Sunday night, soccer fans held up a giant statue of Mladic and shouted his name at a match in Belgrade.
Serbia refuses to acknowledge that genocide took place in Srebrenica, instead calling it a “horrible crime.” Last year, Serbia buried another convicted war criminal, former army chief of staff Nebojsa Pavković, with full military honors in a cemetery for notables.
The Balkan nation’s accession to the EU has been stalled by democratic backsliding and Vucic’s rejection of international sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
Srebrenica, a United Nations “safe haven” for Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), was eventually overrun by the Serbs, who stripped and murdered men and boys and bulldozed their bodies into mass graves. The war began after the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, when Bosnian Serbs took control of parts of Bosnian territory in order to form their own country and unify it with Serbia.
