Mladic was referring to the nearby village of Potocari, which hosted a United Nations peacekeeping base and was the initial gathering point for Bosniak refugees during the war in Bosnia. Under Mladic’s command, Bosnian Serb forces committed a genocide against thousands of Bosniak men and boys in the days that followed. During a match against city rivals Partizan in the Serbian capital, the supporters also unveiled a giant image of Mladic and observed a minute of silence in his memory.
The tribute came days after European football governing body UEFA fined Red Star a total of 98,250 euros, or $114,100, over a banner -“General, eternal glory and thanks” – dedicated to Mladic that was unveiled by the club’s ultras during a Europa League playoff away leg in Plzen, in the Czech Republic. The penalty included a ban on Red Star supporters travelling to the club’s next two European away fixtures, in Lugano, Switzerland on October 15 and Ghent, Belgium on November 26. It was not the first time Red Star supporters had expressed support for Mladic during a European match.
Nine years earlier, fans displayed similar messages during a Europa League tie against Belarusian club BATE Borisov. For Slobodan Georgiev, a news director at TV Nova S in Serbia, the minute of silence at Belgrade’s Marakana stadium marked a qualitative shift rather than a repeat performance. Partizan’s own hardcore supporters, the Grobari, had raised their own banner in tribute to Mladic – reading “General, thank you” – just a week earlier, on August 31, during a Serbian Super Liga match against OFK Beograd, with Mladic’s flag flying over the north stand for the full 90 minutes.
For Georgiev, the fan groups are not an autonomous phenomenon, but an instrument. Sasa Djordevic, a senior analyst at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), sees the same continuity Georgiev described, tracing it back further still. When such behaviour starts to feel normal, it may be the clearest indication that the issue has become deeply ingrained.” Ivana Jeremic, an editor at the Balkan Insight publication, pointed to why sports venues serve that function so well.
What we hear or see on the terraces could hardly happen without some form of ‘permission’ from the authorities,” Jeremic said. Red Star’s fans, as well as the club itself, are currently perceived as a mouthpiece of the government.” On Thursday, a Serbian government plane carried Mladic’s body from The Hague to Belgrade for burial, where it was received with military honours. Djordevic traced the mechanism behind this convergence to the same period cited by Georgiev.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
