Thousands Honor Ratko Mladic in Bosnia’s Serb Republic Despite Genocide Conviction

Several thousand people gathered in Banja Luka to honor Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander who died while serving a life sentence for genocide. The ceremony brought supporters into the streets of the capital of Bosnia’s Serb entity, reviving the deep divisions that still shape memories of the war.

The event followed an appeal from a Serbian veterans’ association in Banja Luka. Participants first assembled in the city center, then marched along the main boulevard behind a banner reading “Commander, thank you for everything!” They also carried a flag measuring several dozen meters that belonged to a former elite unit in the wartime Bosnian Serb army command.

The procession ended at a monument to Serbian soldiers killed during the war. Participants lit candles and waited in a long line to sign a condolence book placed before a framed photograph of Mladic in uniform and a wreath of flowers. Similar commemorations took place in other parts of Bosnia’s Serb entity in recent days.

Mladic died at age 84 in The Hague, where he had been held in a United Nations detention center. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia sentenced him to life in prison in 2017 for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. An appeals judgment upheld the conviction in 2021.

The tribunal found Mladic responsible for crimes including the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which his forces killed about 8,000 Bosniak men and boys. International justice classified the massacre as genocide. The Bosnian war killed nearly 100,000 people between 1992 and 1995. Mladic’s funeral location and date have not been announced, although some media outlets have reported that he could be buried in Belgrade.

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Commander, thank you for everything!