The Commissioner for the Protection of Equality of Serbia, Milan Antonijević, recommended to the mayor of Belgrade, Aleksandar Šapić, that he refrain from publishing content that incites hatred and division in society after his publication about Ratko Mladić on social networks, while the Youth Initiative for Human Rights states that with this recommendation, for the first time, a Serbian institution respected the final judgment of the Hague Tribunal against the former commander of the Main Staff of the Republika Srpska Army, Detektor announced.
The recommendation states that Aleksandar Šapić should take care not to post content on his social media accounts that may lead to negative reactions and incite hatred and division in society, as well as secondary victimization of all conflict victims and their families, as well as disruption of inter-ethnic and ethnic relations in the community.
In April of this year, Šapić shared a photo of war criminal Ratko Mladić on social media with the message “General Ratko Mladić #srpskihero” and an emoticon of the flag of the Republic of Serbia, after which the Youth Initiative for Human Rights Serbia (YIHR) filed a complaint with the commissioner for glorifying a person legally convicted of genocide in Srebrenica. Šapić subsequently deleted that post, Detektor reports.
Antonijević stated in the recommendations that in European practice, the glorification of persons convicted of war crimes, through murals, monuments and streets, is subject to harsh criticism and can be interpreted as revisionism and denial of crimes.
“This sends the wrong message that society does not recognize the verdicts of international courts and that there is no empathy for the victims,” reads Antonijević’s recommendations.
He added that, when it comes to a conviction for one of the heaviest acts of international law, this should be reason enough for every democratic society and all its organs and public office holders to refrain from any glorification of a person who has been convicted of such acts, even in a state where his state of health is seriously impaired.
Mladić was sentenced to life imprisonment in The Hague for the genocide in Srebrenica and crimes committed in other cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Marko Milosavljević from the Youth Initiative for Human Rights Serbia told Detektor that the celebration of war criminals should be criminally sanctioned by amending the Criminal Code of Serbia so that the denial of not only domestic but also international court judgments is punished.
“Even if this is insufficiently explained, the commissioner’s recommendation is still significant, because, on the one hand, it proves that the glorification of Mladić constitutes hate speech. On the other hand, this is the first case that the institution of the Republic of Serbia respected the verdict against Ratko Mladić from 2021,” stated Milosavljević.
Milosavljević pointed out that the consequences of impunity for such statements can be seen in the footage from the Drina regatta, where a large group of citizens sang chauvinistic chants calling for the murder of Bosniaks alongside pictures of Ratko Mladić.
“In a country where individual attackers of the writer and activist Vladimir Arsenijević were punished with misdemeanors, as well as activists of the Youth Initiative who booed the war criminal Šljivančanin, it is only possible to build the rule of law through a fundamental reform of education and the judiciary,” he added.
Veselin Šljivančanin was sentenced to ten years in prison by the Hague Tribunal for the crime in Vukovar.
According to Milosavljević, the Prosecutor’s Office should prosecute all those who incite racial, religious and national hatred, including high officials, and thus prove their independence.
