Most Serbs still see jailed Mladic as a hero
THE international court has finished its work and Bosnian Serb wartime military chief Ratko Mladic will end his days in prison, but Bosnia will struggle to turn the page on its ethnic war.
“A judicial process in itself can never achieve reconciliation,” the UN war crimes court’s chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz said ahead of Mladic’s guilty verdict, delivered on Wednesday.
“Reconciliation has to come from within society.”
But the process of reconciliation has stalled in the Balkans, the Council of Europe rights commissioner Nils Muiznieks wrote.
He cited mounting ethnic divisions and polarisation, as well as a denial of genocide and glorification of war criminals.
Even now, Bosnian Serb politicians remained prisoners of the idea that it was a political tribunal, a historic injustice towards Serbs, independent political analyst Tanja Topic said.
For most Bosnian Serbs, the Mladic verdict was no turning point, as it would not trigger a change in attitude towards war crimes committed by Serb forces, she said.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on Wednesday sentenced Mladic to life in prison for genocide during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war.
Just a few hours before the verdict, a few kilometres from the Srebrenica massacre memorial, several posters were seen showing Mladic in uniform with the caption: “You are our hero.”
Bosnian Serb political leader Milorad Dodik called the convicted war criminal a legend for the Serbian people.
More than two decades after the end of the war, that view continues to be held by most Bosnian Serbs.
While Bosnian Serbs are Orthodox Christians, and represent a third of the country’s 3.5 million inhabitants, Muslims make up a little over a half of the population and Catholic Croats 15%.
Those who refuse to define themselves along ethnic-religious lines – called the “ostali” (others) – represent only 3% of the population.
Symbolising their marginalisation, the constitution says that they cannot aspire to become members of the country’s tripartite presidency.
The Dayton peace agreement silenced the guns in November 1995. But according to Predrag Kojovic, head of small multi-ethnic party Nasa Stranka, it also gave the nationalists virtually unlimited power over their ethnic territories.
It helped them achieve the goals they had set out to attain during the war through other, political means, he said.
A quarter of a century after the start of a war that left 100 000 dead and 2.2 million displaced, representatives of all ethnic communities still evoke the concept of three narratives, or three truths, about what happened.
School segregation, implemented under the pretext of protecting minority rights, helps perpetuate this conflict.
Meanwhile, the divide between ethnic communities has continued to deepen.
The northern city of Banja Luka was once multi-ethnic – 49% of its inhabitants were Serbs, while Muslims and Croats represented 19% and 15% respectively. Banja Luka is now 90% ethnic Serb.
A symbol of multiculturalism under the communist Yugoslav era, the capital Sarajevo followed the same trend and is now home to a large Muslim majority.
The Serbian mayor of the town of Srebrenica, scene in 1995 of Europe’s worst massacre since World War 2, says he believes in a society where once rival communities can live together in peace.
But still it was obvious that Bosnia-Herzegovina did not work as a state, he said. – AFP