The Srebrenica Committee Luxembourg strongly condemns the messages that have appeared on social media in Luxembourg glorifying Ratko Mladić, a convicted war criminal sentenced by international justice to life imprisonment, notably for the genocide committed in Srebrenica, as well as for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Ratko Mladić is not a hero. He will remain in history as one of the principal military figures responsible for some of the gravest crimes committed in Europe since the Second World War.
It is therefore deeply disturbing and morally unacceptable to see individuals, including here in Luxembourg, attempting to glorify him, portray a convicted war criminal as a hero, or relativise facts established by international court judgments.
We also condemn in the strongest possible terms any intention by the Serbian authorities to grant Ratko Mladić a funeral with the highest state honours, as has been publicly announced.
Granting state honours to a person convicted of genocide would not be a mere funeral gesture. It would be a political act of profound significance: the institutional glorification of a war criminal and, with him, of the nationalist ideology that fuelled the project of a “Greater Serbia” and accompanied policies that led to persecution, ethnic cleansing, mass atrocities and, ultimately, the Srebrenica genocide.
Honouring Ratko Mladić at the highest level of the state would therefore send an unequivocal and deeply disturbing message: that this ideology has never truly been rejected. It would confirm that the ideology of “Greater Serbia” — which fuelled policies of persecution, ethnic cleansing, mass atrocities and ultimately genocide — continues to live on within political and institutional structures that still choose to honour and celebrate those who put it into practice.
This is precisely what makes such state honours so deeply troubling: they would not merely glorify a man convicted of genocide; they would amount to an institutional affirmation of the political and ideological legacy to which his name and his crimes remain inextricably linked.
Such an act would be particularly shameful and incompatible with the European ambitions of a state that aspires to join the family of the European Union.
The European Union is not merely an economic space. It is also a community founded on fundamental values: human dignity, peace, democracy, the rule of law, respect for international justice, and the rejection of ideologies that have led Europe to mass atrocities.
One cannot claim to belong to this community of values while turning a person definitively convicted of genocide into a state-honoured hero.
The Srebrenica Committee Luxembourg also calls on Luxembourg’s institutions to remain vigilant in the face of the public glorification of war criminals, the denial or trivialisation of genocide, and rhetoric capable of fuelling hatred between communities.
Freedom of expression must never become a pretext for glorifying genocide, humiliating its victims, or promoting hatred.
This is not about responding to hatred with hatred. It is about defending facts, justice, remembrance, and the fundamental values on which our European society is built.
A war criminal does not become a hero in death.
A genocide does not disappear with the death of the man who commanded it.
And no state ceremony can erase a judgment delivered in the name of international justice.
For peace, against hatred.