Former Serbian foreign minister and veteran politician Vuk Drašković has issued a stark warning over Serbia’s possible decision to give Ratko Mladić a state and military funeral.
For Drašković, this is not simply about how Serbia chooses to bury a convicted war criminal. It is about what kind of country Serbia chooses to be.
He condemned the growing attempts to portray Mladić as a Serbian hero, despite his conviction by the Hague Tribunal for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
“The media coronation of Ratko Mladić as a knight and hero of the Serbian nation is shameful and unforgivable. It is a celebration of the terrible crimes for which he was convicted. Serbia is standing on the edge of a spiritual abyss,” Drašković said.
And his warning over a state funeral is even more damning.
He said that burying Mladić with the highest military and state honors would amount to burying Serbia’s own moral, legal and human foundations.
That is the real choice facing Serbia.
It can respect the victims and the verdicts of international courts — or it can turn a man convicted of genocide into a symbol of national pride.
It cannot credibly do both.
A state that honors those convicted of genocide does not merely rewrite history. It tells the world what it is willing to remember, what it is willing to forget, and whose suffering it is willing to ignore.
Drašković’s message should therefore be taken seriously:
If Serbia buries Mladić as a hero, it will not be honoring its past. It will be exposing its present.
