Butcher or Hero? Glorifying War Criminals Is Not The National Pride You Think It Is 

Ratko Mladić’s memory is ‘deeply etched in the memory and prayers of the majority of our Serbian Orthodox people, who feel and nurture a deep sense of gratitude towards him’ pronounced the Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Porfirije following Mladić’s death earlier this month. This glowing elegy comes despite the fact that its subject was the man responsible for the killing of a nine-year-old boy during the Siege of Sarajevo (5th of April 1992 to 29th of February 1996), along with thousands of other Muslim men and boys during the Srebrenica Massacre (1995). 

You may ask, why is the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church singing the praises of a man whose actions constitute war crimes and the genocide of a whole population? A man known as the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’ who was serving a life sentence in the Hague for those very crimes? 

Well, the answer is a bit convoluted.

The War & The Biggest Fish in the Pond

Ratko Mladić was Commander of the Bosnian-Serb Army during the splintering of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. His vision of a ‘Greater Serbia’ is one he pursued with single-minded determination. A determination which inevitably led to one of the bloodiest moments in Europe’s history since Nazi Germany. 

Mladić’s greatest crimes were committed during the Siege of Sarajevo and Srebrenica Massacre which he commanded. Sarajevo was the longest city siege in modern warfare lasting 1,425 days and leading to the murder of over 13,000 individuals and the destruction of the majority of the city’s infrastructure. At this time, Mladić is quoted giving his soldiers orders to ‘Target Muslim neighbourhoods – not many Serbs live there. Shell them until they are on the edge of madness.’ His desire to eliminate non-Serbs, particularly Bosniak Muslims, drove these ruthless, genocidal actions. 

Mladić’s most renowned act of atrocity, occurred in the summer of 1995, in a small town of eastern Bosnia called Srebrenica. Mladić and his forces rounded up thousands of Bosniaks who were supposedly under the protection of UN Peacekeepers. They shot the men and boys, raped the women and girls, then disposed of the bodies in mass, unmarked graves. Victims as young as 12 years old were murdered on a mass scale with no remorse. This massacre was the ground for accusations of genocide which later made their way into the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. It took 14 years for Mladić to stand trial. He was eventually convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity, and violations of the customs of war. 

Though sentenced by the UN Tribunal in the Hague to spend the rest of his life in prison, Mladić nonetheless remained a symbol of national pride for many Serbs, garnering support from the country’s far-right government to this day. On the 27th of August 2026, Ratko Mladić died in custody  following a history of heart attacks and strokes. His passing brought Serbia’s history with crimes against humanity and genocide back into the spotlight. The question of whether any military honours should be bestowed at the funeral inevitably exposed what survivors and their families feared: despite Mladić’s mass acts of cruelty, many Serbian nationalists and heads of government see him as a hero, not as the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’.

Mercy & Glory for the Butcher

The irony of mercy for a man who enabled and ordered the slaughter and rape of thousands is not lost on anyone. Yet, prior to his passing, Mladić’s defence team persistently and repeatedly petitioned the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) to release the war criminal into Serbian custody so that he may spend his last days on his home soil. They called this a ‘humanitarian’ release given that Mladić had documented health problems and his doctors agreed he was nearing the end of his life. The defence had previously filed for similar early release pleas which had been denied. In a display of support, Nenad Vujic, Serbia’s Minister of Justice, echoed the calls of the defence citing reports by The Hague’s medical officers underscoring that Mladić was in his final days. Despite these calls for mercy, the IRMCT ruled that Mladić was receiving adequate care within the facility, which encompassed comprehensive medical treatment and provisions for family visitation. In addition, the tribunal emphasized that the extraordinary severity of his crimes precluded any justification for a humanitarian release. 

Mladić ultimately passed away in custody of The Hague, but the transfer of his remains to Serbia and the subsequent mourning only compounds the problem at hand. Immediately following the announcement of his death, it was communicated by the Serbian government that Mladić would receive a state funeral. Bestowing the prestige of such an event to a war criminal was, as can be expected, a highly controversial decision amongst both the international community and left-leaning parts of the Serbian population. A state funeral is an honour for heroes of countries, after all. The government later retracted the state funeral designation after explicit pushback from the European Union. 

Unfortunately, this did not put an end to the glorification of Ratko Mladić. His body was transferred back to Serbia with a military guard and the Serbian flag draped over his coffin. As for the ceremony itself, while not a state funeral in name, Mladić was buried with full military honours, including a three-volley rifle salute. The Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church himself presided over the funeral while high-profile members of the government, including Defence Minister, Bratislav Gašić, Minister of Justice, Nenad Vujić, and the President’s son were all present. No one could mistake the funeral for anything less than what it was – the glorification of a national hero. 

To see the full scale of pomp and circumstance afforded to Mladić at his funeral, please read the following article by The Independent which includes images of the ceremony

This glorification is by no means exclusive to high-level public figures. The perception of Mladić as a loyal soldier and an object of national pride is woven soundly within the general Serbian public and the state’s media. Not all Serbs are defenders of Mladić, that must be clear, but those that are thrive in concerningly high numbers. Serb nationalists held thousands of vigils in his honour. Others travelled to pay their respects at the funeral, carrying with them giant Serbian flags with Mladić’s face in the centre. 

When such large parts of a population are willing to overlook the horrors of their own history, that history slowly gets rewritten. In the process, not only are victims further marginalised, but the values of democratic society as a whole are diminished.

Laying Roses on a War Criminal’s Grave

Ratko Mladić is just the latest in a long line of war criminals to be honoured as a hero after death. Despite the horrors of World War II and the international community’s commitment to never again allow similar genocidal events, many Nazi party members were glorified by members of the public; their burial sites turned into shrines. One such case is that of Rudolf Hess, one of Hitler’s closest associates, whose wish to be buried in the family grave was granted. This became problematic as people began to flock to the small town of Wunsiedel to pay tribute to the Nazi criminal and his grave became a kind of perverted pilgrimage destination. Marches were organised in his honour by neo-Nazis despite bans by the local government. In such a sensitive post-war period, this kind of glorification was even more abhorrent than it is today. In response, officials eventually dismantled the headstone and burial site. They exhumed the body of Rudolf Hess and, after cremating the remains, scattered the ashes at sea to avoid creating another site of worship. 

This kind of idolisation of war criminals was partly anticipated by the officials of The Hague after the Second World War. Aware that burial sites can become pilgrimage points, it was decided that all Nazi criminals sentenced to death would be cremated and their ashes scattered. Unfortunately, mere years later, the judges of the ICTY did not follow the same procedures and avoided adding any clauses to the final judgement which restricted the location or manner of burial for convicted war criminals. Since the family could decide the means of burial, many war criminals from the Balkans were buried with headstones in prominent locations, leading to glorification – as in the case of Mladić. There is a clear correlation between the glorification of war criminals after they’ve passed and the existence of defined burial sites that can be used as pilgrimage points. Thus far, cremation and the scattering of ashes or refraining from disclosing burial sites has proven to be relatively effective in discouraging idolisation. 

No matter the situation, treating war criminals and others who have been complicit in genocide as saints or martyrs of a country is not only a form of rationalising their crimes, but it also delegitimises the experiences of victims and survivors.  For example, Mladić, the war criminal responsible for the Srebrenica genocide, has now been afforded a place of rest, a burial, a grave, a site for his family to return to and mourn. They can lay their roses if they so wish. In stark contrast, no such honour was afforded to the countless victims of the genocide that Mladić and his men perpetrated. It is a known fact, that after the massacre at Srebrenica, the bodies of the 8,000 murdered men and boys were buried in huge mass graves. When international attention started to turn towards what had happened, the panicked Serb forces dug up these mass graves, and redistributed the bones across thousands of smaller sites. Consequently, femur and skull, tibia and spine were scattered across the area – re-piecing a body back together became a near impossibility. 

The Dutch government, following the failure of their peacekeepers to protect the victims of the massacre who had been in the UN camp they were controlling, felt such an immense burden of responsibility that they pledged to continue uncovering mass graves until the body of every man killed or lost was reunited with his family. Yet, many Mothers of Srebrenica have, over 30 years later, not received a body to bury, nor information on their loved ones for closure. When the victims and their families are denied a dignified burial or any form of emotional resolution, it begs the question, why is the man responsible for their trauma and suffering granted that honour? Did the people he massacred not deserve the same?

Serbia’s Post-Mortem

The overt idolisation of Ratko Mladić has raised the question of not just Serbia’s past, but also future in eyes of the international community. Following the government’s evident support for Mladić, and their painting of him as a national hero, the European Union took a firm stance against such glorification of any and all war criminals. As a candidate to join the EU, Serbia was accused of defiling the Union’s values to an extent which damages its status as a candidate. Especially given the support Mladić’s ‘State’ funeral and hero status received from Putin’s Russia. The endangerment of Serbia’s status with the EU is unsurprising given its progress toward full-state membership has stalled in recent years largely due to the ruling party’s relationship with Russia.

In fact, the timing of such a publicized funeral coincides remarkably with the Serbian government’s announcement of snap elections to take place this October – both occurring within mere hours of one another. The Serbian government, which has been led by the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) since 2012, is led by Aleksandar Vučić – a stark supporter of Ratko Mladić and candidate for Prime Minister in the upcoming election. During Mladić’s years of evading the ICTY, it was Vučić who called for the war criminal’s protection by the Serbian government. Later, he protested against the arrest of other war criminals, and even against the UN General Assembly decision to adopt an annual day to remember victims of the Srebrenica massacre. Given Vučić and his party’s support for Mladić, it is unsurprising that they have turned his funeral into a spectacle. Several media outlets have speculated that the election announcement was timed to garner support for Vučić’s party by bolstering nationalist feelings in the far-right.

It is ultimately abhorrent that a war criminal is receiving such a glorious funeral and kind words, while the bodies of thousands of his victims lay undiscovered and forgotten in mass graves, their families denied any emotional closure for the passing of their relatives – let alone a proper funeral. 

No matter the underlying motives, it is imperative that state governments and local populations cease treating war criminals as saints. Instead, let’s shift that focus to survivors, victims, and their families who have dealt with the unimaginable horrors of genocide and massacres.

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