“There are more Mladics in Serbia, they grow and will continue where he stopped,” Srdjan Nogo of ultra-nationalist organization Srpske Dveri from Belgrade told the crowd.
The Bosnian Serb former general was arrested in Serbia on Thursday. He is expected to be sent to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague overnight to face charges of genocide during the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims and the 1992-95 siege of Bosnian capital Sarajevo.
Bosnian Serb veterans who see Mladic as a hero arrived by bus from across the Bosnian Serb Republic to the region’s main city of Banja Luka. It was the largest protest in Bosnia since Mladic was arrested last week in a Serbian village after 16 years on the run.
Protesters carried posters with Mladic’s photographs, some of which read: “We are all arrested,” “God helps in Heaven, Russia on earth” and “Russia Forever.” Russia cultivates close political contacts with Serbia.
The crowd also taunted Serbia’s President Boris Tadic, who many Serbs now see as a traitor because he gave the green light for Mladic’s arrest. “Boris, kill yourself, save Serbia,” they chanted.
The protest reflects the deep ethnic divide still prevailing in Bosnia, which after the war was split in a Serb Republic and a federation of Muslims known as Bosniaks and Croats under a weak central government.
While Serbs see Mladic as the Serb defender, Bosnian Muslims think of him as a ruthless military commander who ordered mass killings across the Balkan country during a war that killed more than 100,000, most of them Muslims.
“I cannot believe these people are glorifying Ratko Mladic today and show no empathy for deaths of thousands of victims that Mladic is responsible for,” said Edina Ramulic, the head of the Izvor organization of families of killed and missing people from the northwestern Prijedor area.
“It really hurts and I also feel fear and discomfort as such a rally shows that we are going back to the 1990s,” she said.
Bosnian Serb leaders were conspicously absent from the protest even though they have long strived to turn their region into a separate state on the back of Serb nationalism.
The latest separatist move was a call for a referendum challenging the authority of the national judiciary and of an international peace envoy, which the region’s parliament was due to withdraw later on Tuesday under EU pressure.
Serb Republic President Milorad Dodik has pledged support to the protesters, saying he will do all he could to preserve the dignity and reputation of the Serb Republic army.
Many were angry at him for not showing up.
“Ratko Mladic created the state (Serb Republic) and thieves are ruling now,” said Milan Curkovic from Banja Luka. “Dodik spent the war in Belgrade while Mladic was spilling his blood. Dodik is still stealing while our general goes to The Hague.”
Serb Republic television broadcast enthusiastic reports from the protest, openly supporting protesters.
Muslim residents of Banja Luka — a small minority in the mostly ethnic Serb city — voiced discomfort with the nationalist rhetoric.
“Ever since Mladic was arrested, I’ve been watching television and listening to my neighbors, and it seems like nothing has changed since 1992 when my family was forced to leave the town,” said Emir Djuzel, 58, an auto mechanic from Banja Luka.
About 15 percent of Muslims who left during the war have returned to Banja Luka. Emina Bajric, 72, a Muslim pensioner from Banja Luka, said she was scared.
“Night after night I shiver in fear that someone may come and force us leave the house and shoot at us,” Bajric told Reuters. “We have been through such an ordeal once and I am not sure if I could go through it again.”
