Ratko Mladić: the war criminal who became a martyr for Bosnian Serbs

[bell] The coffin was draped in a Serbian flag carried by soldiers dressed in camouflage. Thousands of mourers queued for hours to light candles and pay their final respects. The body was then buried with full military honors with an orchestra and a rifle salute. It might sound like a funeral for a prime minister or president, but what if I told you it was to commemorate the mastermind behind some of the worst atrocities since World War II? I'm talking about Ratcom Ladic, the Bosnian Serb military general who died last month and was laid to rest in a cemetery in the Serbian capital, Belgrade this week. Ladic was serving a life sentence for genocide and other war crimes committed during the Bosnian War of the 1990s. One of the world's most notorious war criminals is dead. >> The former Bosian Serb warlord Ratcom Ladic has died in a prison in the H. >> To most of the world, he was a brutal murderer who wanted to eradicate Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats in pursuit of an ethnically pure greater Serbia, but not everyone remembers him that way. [music] I'm Justin Bergman, the international affairs editor at The Conversation in Australia, [music] and this is the Conversation Weekly, where experts explain how we ended up here. This week, why a war criminal is being celebrated by some as a hero, and how this is reopening old wounds in one of Europe's most divided regions. [music] Oliver Simich, you are an international law professor at Griffith University in Australia and a Bosnian Serb yourself. As someone who has devoted a career to studying the legacy of the Bosnian war, how did the images from the funeral make you feel? So I would say that although these scenes and current events are not entirely surprising to me and to many of us who have been following closely the politics in the Balkans, they are still deeply disturbing and on personal level very sad. As someone who comes from Bosnia and who spent much of my professional life studying war and its aftermath, I really still find it difficult to watch the man convicted for genocide, war crimes, the crimes against humanity, being publicly celebrated as a hero being glorified and being now buried with all state honors. So I think there is something really disheartening in watching all of this >> and what's been happening on the streets since Madach's death. >> What we have been watching is quite extraordinary and I think in particular for survivors utterly shocking and very disturbing. When Lad's body returned from the Hague, it was welcomed by the soldiers of Serbia. His body was flown by the government's plane. Some residents of Serbia have flags and banners portraying him as a hero on route to Belgrade. Since his death also new muriel's new graffiti depicting Ladic as a hero appeared across Serbia, but also Republic of Serka where majority of Bostonian Serbs live. So Republica Servska is one of the two administrative entities in Bosnian Slogo. The another one is a federation of Bosnia and Hergoina where there is a mix of Bosnjaks and Bosnian creations. We are dealing really with the public memory and construction of heroism of someone who was convicted for the most profound crimes in humanity. So what concerns me the most is the normalization of these images and young people who were born after the war. This is what they are exposed to and repeatedly encounter Mladich not through the evidence that we have in courts and presented at his trial but rather through this pop culture of Madic as a war hero. >> Now remind listeners who Mladich is how did he rise through the ranks of the Bosnian Serb army in the 1990s and what did he do during the war? So he was a professional Yugoslav military officer who emerged from the structures of Yugoslav people's army during the collapse of Yugoslavia and during the rise of competing nationalist projects the militarization of society that all happened in beginning of the 1990s. So he accelerated dramatically during the dissolution of Yugoslavia and he was promoted first to major general in ' 91 and then in 1992 when the army of Republic of Surpa was established. Ladish became its chief commander and he remained in that position until 1996 when he went into hiding. So his public and military presence became inseparable from the war itself and he became one of its most visible figures. exercising commander over Bostonian Serb force and very closely associated with siege of SVO and the genocide in Sberism for which he was [music] convicted. He went underground in 1996. He was in Serbia for 16 years. He lived in a small village in the north of Serbia where he was arrested May 2011. So now we see all this glorification and Serbia portraying him as a national hero. But we also have to remind ourselves that it was the Serbian government of the day who [music] arrested him because the EU was putting pressure that he needs to be arrested. >> The Serban genocide was a particularly harrowing part of the war. Can you explain what happened in Mladich's role in it? So, Saranita genocide happened in July 1995 where more than 8,000 men and boys were killed in Sonita, which was a UN protected safe area during the war. >> It soon became clear that the Serbs had slaughtered thousands of Bosnian men and buried them in mass graves. There are this famous archival footage of Rafladich entering Sonita on July 10 and saying you know Treonita is going to be returned to Serbs. We are going to make our revenge and you yourself were born in Bosnia. What do you remember about that time when the war broke out? I was a 19 years old. I was a first year student at the law school. I was quite oblivious to politics. We knew a little bit from the news. But most of the people I would say in Boston or in for Slavia could not really imagine what will happen. I remember that the life that we had lived had stopped and that most of my friends who were non-serbs had to leave the city. I was about to be drafted in territorial defense of Republic of Serpska, not knowing what actually that was supposed to mean, but we didn't wait for explanations. My parents just put me on the bus and then I left at the end of 1992. But, you know, it takes time to really fully understand and I think I spent all my life trying to understand what really happened back then. People often think if you survive war, you know everything about war and you must know why it happened and what happened. But that's not necessarily true for most of us. It really came especially younger generation came as a shock and most of my male friends had been drafted into the war. Most of them have been killed during the war not necessarily because they wanted this war. We lived before war started in multi-thnic and diverse society in particularly in Boston was very well known. So that's why it was for us unimaginable that interthnic conflict can happen because we lived in this multi-thnic and diverse society. So it was disheartening and it was a very traumatic experience. [music] >> After the break, is there any hope for reconciliation in the Balkans? >> If you're enjoying the conversation weekly, you may also enjoy a podcast from our friends at the Academy of Social Sciences in the UK. They're currently celebrating the release of the 10th series of one of the UK's most popular social science podcasts, The Wii Society, with Will Hutton. Whether it's Richard Wisman exploring the science of luck, Stefani Hatch sharing healthcare stories, or Yan Emanuel DV on the World Happiness Report, The Wii Society with Will Hutton is the place to hear how social science research insights can inspire optimism, connection, and positive change. That's the Wii Society with Will Hutton, available on Spotify, Apple, and all major podcast platforms. >> Welcome back, Ollie. In 2017, Mlad became a convicted war criminal. He was sentenced to life in prison by an international tribunal. So, given this, why do so many Serbs still immortalize him? What we are seeing now in Serbian Republic of Serbska in particular, Amadich has been constructed and portrayed not as a convicted war criminal but as a soldier as a martyr who defended the Serbian people during the Bosnian war and this is how majority of Serbs do think about him. So generations of Serb children have grown on these narratives which are also part of the official Serb educational curriculum. So I think that's very important to understand and it's easier to understand why am I saying this is not entirely surprising because we have been warning about these narratives and glorification and denial for past at least two decades. So once that narrative of heroism and him being hero and martyr became embedded in political discourse in commemorations in families in education in popular culture in all public spaces then the judgment of an international court can be portrayed as an attack on the group itself rather than as individual criminal responsibility of one man. So this is where denial and historical revisionism become extremely important. So if people are repeatedly told for decades that their community did not commit war crimes, that they have been just victims of this war, that the crimes have been exaggerated, that there was not really genocide or that the international tribunal was politically biased against their people, then it becomes possible and we have very fertile ground to reject that judgment without seriously engagement with enormous body of evidence on which the judgment was based. The media like to portray Mattic as a monster and the quote unquote butcher of Bosnia, but you disagree with this. Why? >> I think that's a kind of simplistic way of dismissing Madic and his actions. And this is why I think I would be very careful portraying him as a madman or as a monster because Madic was not judicially characterized as a psychopath. nor was he found to have diminished criminal responsibility because of his psychiatric condition. I think it's important to remind all of us that he was a human. He may have been ruthless but some ordinary people can also be ruthless but they will not commit mass atrocity as a madage. So why has Madage done that and this is what am I interesting in knowing what motivated him to do what he did what helped him with which help he has done what he has done. So we'll never be able to answer this question if we just dismiss him simply as a monster. What kind of structures are there behind these actions because we know very well that mass atrocities are not possible to be committed by one man only. There must be a complete governmental structure behind these actions. So I think that's why I'm bit wary that people just call him bacher and monster and we finish kind of our conversation there. It doesn't allow us to engage with these more complex questions and narratives behind motivations of the people who commit those crimes. >> And the division that you've spoken about in Bosnia and Herzgoia extends beyond just Madic. Right. In fact, there's no common accepted facts about the entire war are there. >> We are still discussing as and Ladic exemplifies this. This is another huge symbolic example of all divisions that exist in Bosnia because we are still struggling to answer the questions. Who started war? What happened during this war? Who are the victims? Who are the perpetrators? So struggle over these narratives and collective memories are really very much alive and present and Boston as I said this complexity in this division has unfortunately started with the peace agreement which on one hand great because it stopped war but on the other hand it also produced this enormous and most complex system of government really in the world. So it divided the country in these two ethnic entities and despite that ordinary people do travel they do cross these administrative borders and we have friends across these borders and everything but still the structure and the ideologies from the war have very much stayed the same. So this is a huge problem. >> Mad's death has reopened so many wounds. [music] What does proper reconciliation in the region look like? I don't know you know we haven't been talking about reconciliation for quite some time and it has become a kind of unpopular term we talked a lot about transitional justice and I have been you know thinking last few years where are we with transitional justice in Yugoslavia and elsewhere having in mind what's happening around the globe if I just look at the region and think about reconciliation I think we are very far from that unfortunately and I think there is a lot to do in terms of you know revisionism of history and [music] deconstructing all these narratives and I'm not quite sure how we are going to do that [music] unless we remove those present governments from the place of authority and bring some people who have other [music] values human rights values and other priorities rather than extreme [music] nationalist priorities having said that I think it's very important that we do not just give up um it's [music] very as I said disheartening It's very sad. It opened a lot of wounds. But it needs to give us renewed energy to think what [music] we need to do and how we are going to move on so we prevent these narratives [music] to live on. Another important thing that I think has been missing from the region is that each ethnic group has to talk about their own crimes as well. So [music] that's also something that we have never done. Everyone talks about their own victim and victimhood, but there is a little reckoning and dealing with the past when it comes to [music] owning your own responsibility and accountability for some things that happened in the 1990s. So I think that also needs to happen if we are going to move on. >> Ollie, thank you so much for your time. It's been wonderful having you. >> Thanks Justin. Thank you. >> That's it for this week's episode of the conversation weekly. Read Oliver Era's article on Madich's death and [music] what it means for Bosnia at the conversation.com. We'll link to the article in our show notes. This week's episode was written by me, Justin Bergman, and Isabella Podwinsky, who was [music] also the executive producer. Sound mixing is by Lloyd Barrett, and our theme music is by Nita Sarl. [music] Gemma Wear is our head of audio, and Ashley McGee is our head of editorial innovation. Misha Ketchel and Steven Khan [music] are our editors chief. The Conversation is a nonprofit news outlet dedicated to sharing the work of academic [music] experts with a wider audience. If you like what we do, please consider supporting us at [music] donate.thecon conversation.com. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.