New graffiti with the image of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic have appeared on the streets of Zvornik, while those responsible for the stickers with his image from two weeks ago have still not been found, according to Detektor
Several new graffiti with the image of Ratko Mladic, sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide in Srebrenica and other crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), appeared on a pole in Zvornik, only two weeks after the football club bus was covered with stickers of Mladic’s image.
New graffiti on an advertising pole at the entrance to the city and near the sports hall were noticed by BiH journalists, but local police say they have no such reports. Amir Efendic, a former camp detainee, said that he noticed new stickers.
“I don’t feel comfortable, but I don’t show it, so that further provocations do not continue. I was recently near the sports hall, someone shouted: ‘What’s the picture like?'” said Efendic.
He is disappointed because there is no reaction; everyone is silent, but he is even more sorry if these stickers really come from young people living in Zvornik.
“It starts from the family, someone wrongly teaches them something that is not as it should be, as is worthy of a man and of justice. They find encouragement from agitators. They start imitating them in that sense,” he said. The Zvornik Police Station confirmed that they have no reports of new stickers with the image of Ratko Mladic placed in the area of the city of Zvornik.
“During regular field patrols, police officers did not notice the mentioned stickers,” they said.
The City Administration had not responded to a request for comment.
In mid-September, the bus of Football Club “Radnicki” from Lukavac, after a youth selection match that was played in Zvornik, was covered with stickers glorifying war criminal Ratko Mladic as a hero, which the match delegate reported to the Football Association of Republika Srpska (RS).
Ahmet Grahic, president of the Association of Families of Captured and Missing Persons of the Municipality of Zvornik, said that returnees walk in fear because they cannot change anything, and the police do not react, giving the impression that they have no one to complain to.
“This is proof that we, as a constituent people, have no rights to walk normally through Zvornik, when you have to pass by those pictures of criminals, murals,” said Grahic.
The District Prosecutor’s Office in Bijeljina did not respond to an inquiry as to whether they are investigating the appearance of new graffiti with the image of Mladic. They also did not respond to the earlier inquiry about the investigation of the stickers on the football club bus.
The ban on glorifying war criminals or denying war crimes was introduced by amendments to the Criminal Code of BiH, imposed by High Representative Valentin Inzko in July 2021.
Ratko Mladic, former commander of the Army of the RS (VRS), in June 2021, was sentenced before the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals to life imprisonment for the genocide in Srebrenica, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats, the terrorizing of the citizens of Sarajevo, and the taking of UNPROFOR members as hostages.
