Serbian police briefly detained a local opposition activist late on Tuesday (November 9) because she threw eggs at a mural of Ratko Mladić in the center of Belgrade , The latter is a convicted war criminal and a Bosnian Serb wartime commander.
A video posted on an Instagram profile showed that after Aida Ćorović threw eggs at a mural depicting Mladic saluting and wearing a police officer’s hat, a plainclothes man who claimed to be a policeman took her away.
“Tonight’s anger is the face of the (Serbian President) Alexander Vucic regime,” the Belgrade-based N1 TV station quoted Chorović as saying after his release from the local branch.
Korovic’s detention triggered protests from dozens of opposition and left-wing activists, and riot police used the mural to seal off the area near the building.
The Serbian opposition often criticizes Vučić, the former nationalist who later adopted a pro-European policy, and his allies, including authoritarianism, stifling media freedom, attacks on the opposition, corruption, and links to organized crime . Vucic and his allies denied this.
The Serbian Ministry of Interior said in a statement that the police are enforcing public order and earlier banned all public gatherings related to Mladic’s murals.
“From now on, whatever their opinion of the mural depicting General Ratko Mladic, they will be identified,” it said.
78-year-old Mladic led Bosnian Serb forces during the 1992-95 Bosnian War and was convicted by the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal for genocide and war crimes, including the killing of more than 8,000 in the eastern town of Srebrenica in 1995 Muslim men and boys.
But many people in Serbia, EU candidates including some prominent politicians, still regard Mladic as the hero of the war, which killed more than 100,000 people.
In 2010, Serbia’s 250-seat parliament passed a statement condemning the Srebrenica massacre.
