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Vlade Sladoje’s election campaign poster. Photo: Vlade Sladoje/Facebook
The Central Election Commission said on Friday that it has fined Vlade Sladoje, the candidate for mayor of the town of Kalinovik from the Party of Democratic Progress, 20,000 Bosnian marks (around 10,000 euros) for hate speech and glorifying a convicted war criminal.
When Sladoje announced his candidature for mayor of Kalinovik, wartime Bosnian Serb Army chief Ratko Mladic’s hometown, in April this year, he published a photo of himself on his Facebook page wearing a Serbian military uniform from World War II.
He went on to post photos and comments expressing sympathies for the Ravna Gora Movement, a Serbian nationalist Chetnik group, WWII-era Chetnik leader Dragoljub ‘Draza’ Mahailovic, who was executed for treason and and Nazi collaboration by the Yugoslav regime, and Mladic, who was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Hague Tribunal for genocide and other wartime crimes.
Sladoje also called for what he described as a “mobilisation” in Kalinovik “for a dignified victory or an honourable defeat”.
The Central Election Commission said it fined Sladoje because his photographs and militaristic rhetoric could disturb large numbers of people.
“This is one of the highest sanctions we have imposed on a candidate, because invoking wartime events in the context of Bosnia and Herzegovina and glorifying war criminals carries particular weight,” said Irena Hadziabdic, chairperson of the Central Election Commission.
The Party of Democratic Progress, which nominated Sladoje, was fined 3,000 marks (around 1,500 euros), with the explanation that it had not used any other warlike rhetoric in the election campaign and that this was an individual case.
On September 15, Sladoje wrote on Facebook: “I apologise to my Bosniak neighbours if my uniform bothered anyone”. He reposted the photo of himself in uniform and said that he is withdrawing from the race for mayor of Kalinovik, although the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina has not banned his candidacy.
In 2021, Valentin Inzko, who at the time was the High Representative in Bosnia, the international official responsible for overseeing the implementation of the peace deal that ended the 1992-95 war, imposed amendments to the country’s criminal code to prohibit and punish the denial of genocide and the glorification of war criminals.
Local elections will be held across Bosnia and Herzegovina on October 6.
This article was created with the support of the European Union within the project “Accountability Platform”. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the Transparency International in BiH, Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in BiH and Association “Zasto ne” and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
