Mladic's death reopens rift between Sarajevo and Banja Luka

Ratko Mladic, former military chief of the Bosnian Serbs sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide and war crimes, died on Thursday while in the United Nations detention unit in The Hague. His conviction, handed down in 2017, had been upheld on appeal in June 2021 by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. The news, reported by a UN official, was gathered among others by Al Jazeera.

What makes the day a European story, rather than a closed news item, is the geography of the reactions: within the same country, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the death of the same man was read in two opposite ways.

Banja Luka, Moscow, Sarajevo

Milorad Dodik, leader of the SNSD party and former president of the Republika Srpska, called the death a murder. “It is a murder. He was respected by the Serb people” (transl. from English), he stated, according to the roundup of reactions gathered by Balkan Insight, which recorded positions also circulated on the public broadcaster RTRS.

Along the same lines, the Russian foreign ministry accused the Hague tribunal of double standards and anti-Serb bias, claiming that the detainee had been denied fundamental rights. The position, released in a statement, was reported by the Kyiv Post.

On the opposite side, the director of the Srebrenica memorial, Remir Suljagic, called for the victims to be remembered and for the convicted man not to be glorified. Munira Subasic, of the Mothers of Srebrenica association, noted that Mladic is still described today as a hero of the Serbs. The United Nations, through spokesman for the secretary-general Stéphane Dujarric, stated that “the secretary-general stands with the victims, the survivors and their families” (transl. from English), underscoring the definitive nature of the rulings handed down.

The secretary-general stands with the victims, the survivors and their families. — Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN secretary-general (transl. from English)

Why it is European politics

Bosnia-Herzegovina is a country in which two entities coexist within a single state, and in which the reading of the past is a matter of current political positioning. That the leader of the main party of the Republika Srpska should use the word “murder” for a death in international detention is not a historical judgment: it is a message aimed at an electorate and, at the same time, a challenge to the legitimacy of the UN judicial mechanism. That the foreign ministry of a country outside the region should weigh in on the same terrain shows how far the memory of the war remains a lever that can be used from outside.

At this newspaper, judicial reporting is suspended and we do not cover ongoing proceedings. Here there is no proceeding: there is a final ruling dating from June 2021 and there are today’s political reactions. It is on the latter that this piece focuses, noting the positions taken without attributing intentions.

What we do not know

The cause of death has not been made public, and none of the available sources reports an announced or completed forensic examination. The claim that the detainee had been denied fundamental rights remains, as things stand, a statement by the Russian foreign ministry, without independent corroboration in the sources consulted. No decision on the funeral, nor on where it would be held, has been reported, a matter that in the region has in the past had public-order consequences.

The established fact is procedural: the 2017 conviction, upheld on appeal in 2021, remains the legal act describing the facts attributed to the former commander, and the convicted man’s death does not alter it.

Sources: Balkan Insight (BIRN); U.S. News & World Report, via Reuters roundup; Al Jazeera; Kyiv Post.