An opinion piece published by Danas attempts to turn European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos’s decision to cancel her planned visit to Serbia into a discussion about the supposed neglect of “Serbian victims” of the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
But this argument completely misses the point — and, more importantly, shifts attention away from the issue that triggered Marta Kos’s decision in the first place: the continued glorification of Ratko Mladić.
Marta Kos did not cancel her visit because Serbian victims exist. She did not condemn the remembrance of Serbian victims. She reacted to the public glorification of Ratko Mladić, a convicted war criminal whose crimes include genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
That is the issue.
Yet instead of confronting it, the Danas author asks why European officials do not speak with the same intensity about Serbian victims.
Why?
Because that was not the subject of Marta Kos’s decision.
This is precisely where the argument turns into whataboutism. The conversation is moved from a convicted war criminal being glorified to a completely different question: “But what about Serbian victims?”
Of course, victims of war should be remembered. But bringing up another group of victims does not make the glorification of Mladić any less disturbing, nor does it provide an answer to why a man convicted of genocide continues to be celebrated by parts of the Serbian nationalist public sphere.
The attempt to create a moral balance between these issues is particularly misleading when it ignores the scale and nature of the crimes committed during the Bosnian war.
The overwhelming majority of those killed in the Bosnian war were Bosniaks, while Serbian victims represented a significantly smaller proportion of the total. And Srebrenica was not simply another episode in a generalized story of wartime suffering. It was recognized as genocide by international courts.
Those facts cannot simply be erased by placing every victim and every crime into one convenient narrative of “everyone suffered.”
The author says he does not defend Mladić and does not question the verdict against him. Fine. But then the question remains: why is the conversation being redirected from Mladić’s glorification to Serbian victims?
If the goal is genuinely to defend universal remembrance, then the suffering of Serbian victims should not be used as a rhetorical shield whenever the glorification of Mladić is criticized.
A victim does not cancel another victim. And the existence of victims on one side does not absolve a convicted perpetrator on the other.
Most importantly, remembering Serbian victims does not require anyone to glorify, excuse or politically rehabilitate Ratko Mladić.
That is why Marta Kos’s decision was justified.
She was responding to a political and social environment in which a convicted war criminal remains a symbol for nationalist groups and is publicly glorified. Her decision was therefore not an attack on Serbian people or on the memory of those who died during the wars.
It was a response to glorification of a convicted genocidaire.
Trying to turn that into a story about Europeans supposedly “forgetting Serbian victims” is not an answer. It is a diversion.
And this is where the Danas argument deserves to be challenged most directly.
If the author truly wants a discussion about universal memory, then let us have that discussion. But do not use the memory of Serbian victims to dilute the historical responsibility surrounding Ratko Mladić.
Do not change the subject from “Why is Mladić being glorified?” to “Why aren’t Serbian victims being discussed?”
Those are two different questions.
One concerns the remembrance of victims.
The other concerns the glorification of a man convicted of genocide and other international crimes.
They cannot be treated as interchangeable.
The uncomfortable reality is that Ratko Mladić remains a deeply contested figure in Serbia, and attempts to confront his glorification repeatedly encounter the same rhetorical escape route: change the subject, invoke another group’s suffering, and demand that attention be redirected elsewhere.
That is not accountability.
It is relativization.
Marta Kos did not need to apologize for refusing to normalize the glorification of Ratko Mladić. She did not need to balance her position by first listing every victim of every side.
She needed to take a clear position against the glorification of a convicted war criminal.
And she did.
The question that should therefore be directed back to the author is simple:
Why is the focus on Serbian victims being used to avoid confronting the glorification of Ratko Mladić?
Because that is the real issue.
Not whether victims should be remembered.
Not whether every community suffered.
But whether a convicted perpetrator of genocide should be glorified — and whether European officials are right to refuse to normalize it.
The answer should be obvious.
Glorifying Mladić and then crying “Serbian victims” does not change what happened. It only changes the subject.
