GENEVA – Glorifying perpetrators of international crimes and gross human rights violations generates profound re-traumatisation and additional harm to victims, survivors and affected communities, UN experts* warned today, after Ratko Mladić, a former Bosnian Serb general who was convicted of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), was accorded a hero’s funeral in Belgrade on 7 September.
“For survivors of atrocities in the former Yugoslavia and families of those killed or forcibly disappeared, official tributes to persons convicted of such crimes can deepen suffering and undermine memory, truth and accountability,” the experts said, adding that “it is particularly alarming that senior officials from the Republika Srpska entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina where many of the crimes took place, attended the funeral.”
Mladić, known as the “butcher of Bosnia”, was convicted by the ICTY of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1990s conflict and genocide perpetrated in and around Srebrenica in 1995. Mladić died while serving a life sentence in prison in The Hague in August 2026.
According to reports, his coffin was flown to Serbia on a Government plane and carried out by uniformed soldiers. Mladić’s casket was protected by armed guard, and military medals were placed on display as thousands poured into a church in Belgrade to pay their respects.
Three decades after the crimes for which Mladić was convicted, survivors and families continue to endure their lasting consequences, the experts said.
“The legacy of these crimes is not just a matter of the past,” the experts said. “For so many families affected by the enforced disappearances of their loved ones, the search for truth and justice is ongoing.”
“Public actions that appear to honour individuals found responsible for atrocities that shocked the conscience of humanity and create permanent shrines to these perpetrators, risk undermining decades of efforts to seek truth, end impunity and achieve justice and reparations for these crimes,” they warned.
“If such blatant genocide denial succeeds, it will roll back international criminal accountability gains against impunity that were forged in the fires of Nuremberg and Tokyo, and the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda,” they said.
“Victims’ rights to truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence must guide public policy and commemorative practices,” they said. “Remembrance should acknowledge their suffering, preserve historical truth and support reconciliation.”
They called for commemorative initiatives to put victims at the forefront, uphold judicially established facts and legal responsibility, and reject denialism or historical revisionism.
“Efforts to commemorate the past should contribute to healing and respect for human dignity,” the experts said. “They should not create conditions that may be interpreted as denying, minimising or trivialising the suffering of victims.”
“Lasting reconciliation is built on truth, accountability and respect for victims,” the experts said. “Public actions should honour those who suffered and reaffirm the dignity of survivors and affected families.”
The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) has long been engaged with families of the missing and forcibly disappeared persons in the region. In 1994, the Commission on Human Rights established a Special Process on Missing Persons, entrusted to WGEID member Manfred Nowak, to help clarify the fate and whereabouts of missing persons and support their families.
