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The mural of Ratko Mladic in Belgrade after it was hit by paint on Wednesday. Photo: BIRN
Djordjo Zujovic, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Serbia, SDP, threw a bucket of paint over a mural of wartime general Ratko Mladic on the wall of a residential building in Belgrade on Wednesday, despite continuing police efforts to protect the tribute to the Bosnian Serb war criminal.
Zujovic said that the mural celebrating Mladic “represents a stain on the face of every citizen of Serbia, regardless of which nation [ethnicity] he belongs to, or what his religion or political orientation is”.
“I consider what I did to be a normal, human act. I support everyone who shows through his actions that he still cares about the fight for a normal society,” he told the Nova.rs news website.
The mural has been the focus of controversy since the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, a Belgrade-based NGO, called on people to gathering and paint over it on Tuesday, November 9, the International Day of Anti-Fascism and Anti-Semitism.
The Interior Ministry banned the gathering and deployed police to guard the mural. But two female activists, Aida Corovic and Jelena Jacimovic, threw eggs at it and were both arrested.
They were released on Tuesday evening and joined a protest that was held in the city centre against their arrest and the Mladic mural. The protesters marched to the Vracar municipality, where the mural is located, but police with riot shields set up a cordon to prevent them from approaching it.
After the rally ended, a group of far-right supporters shouted insults at the activists. Police said on Wednesday morning that they arrested a total of six people during the day.
Zujovic, a former member of the Liberal Democratic Party who this year joined the Social Democratic Party, which is part of the governing coalition, said that after he threw paint at the mural on Wednesday, he was confronted by a far-right supporter.
“When I did what I did, he said that he would find me, that he would know who I was… I couldn’t see who he was, because his face was almost completely covered,” Zujovic said.
In June this year, the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague upheld Ratko Mladic’s life sentence for the genocide of Bosniaks from Srebrenica, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats across the country during the war, terrorising the population of Sarajevo with a campaign of shelling and sniping during the siege of the city, and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
