LSV, PGS parties to Belgrade Mayor Sapic: Mural honoring Ratko Mladic should be urgently removed

Photo: ATA Images

The Movement of Free Citizens (PSG) has called on Mayor of Belgrade Aleksandar Sapic to make sure that a mural depicting convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic is urgently removed, while the League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina (LSV) said that denying or disrespecting the verdict of the international tribunal for war crimes committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia is unacceptable and disgraceful.

Recommended

Reacting to a statement issued earlier by the Youth Initiative for Human Rights in Serbia, which also requested the removal of the mural with the image of Ratko Mladic, painted on the corner of Njegoseva and Alekse Nenadovica streets in Belgrade, Sapic said that he does not know whether Mladic committed war crimes, but that he knows that he defended the Serb people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and said that judgments passed in The Hague will not affect the possible removal of the mural.

Aleksandar Marton, a spokesperson for the League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina, reacted to this today with a statement in which he reminds Sapic that Serbia is a member of the United Nations, that the UN Security Council established a war crimes court in The Hague in 1993, and that Ratko Mladic has been sentenced to life imprisonment because of the crime of genocide, and crimes against humanity, laws or customs of war during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992-1995.

"Their denial or disrespect is inadmissible and disgraceful," said Marton and assessed that this behavior of the mayor of Belgrade only harms the reputation of the capital city and the entire country.

The Movement of Free Citizens told Sapic that "instead of denying war crimes" he should respect the law and urgently have the mural removed, as well as all others used by various groups to incite national, religious or racial hatred.

"The mayor has thus joined the ranks of politicians who will build their mandate and popularity on right-wing populism, and the victims of war," the PSG statement said.

(Telegraf.rs)