Written by: Aashrab Khanal - 22001, Grade XI
Posted on: 15 March, 2021
Ratko Mladic was the former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska [VRS] during the war in Yugoslavia. Mladic was born in the town of Kalinovik, Bosnia, and Herzegovina. Raised by a single mother, Mladic went on to study at the various military academies and by the time of the Yugoslav wars, became Major General of the army of Bosnian Serbs. During the war, Ratko Mladic committed various war crimes and got his name as “The Butcher of Bosnia”.
Ratko Mladic gained prominence during the Yugoslav Wars. To explain in brief, the Yugoslav Wars were a series of conflicts between different ethnic groups living in Yugoslavia. After the death of Josip Broz Tito, ethnic tensions began to rise between the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Slovenes, Kosovar Albanians, and Macedonians which led to various wars of independence and insurgencies. During the same time, Ratko Mladic became the commander of the military forces and began working on his plan for a “Greater” Serbia. The worst of Mladic’s atrocities came in July 1995 when his troops occupied the UN safe areas in Srebrenica and Zepa. At Srebrenica, Mladic expelled more than 40,000 people mainly Muslim Bosnians and his troops killed more than 8,000 people. Mladic’s men rounded up Muslim men and boys, separating them from their families, and dumped their bodies in mass graves after mercilessly killing them. There is much evidence that shows that Mladic hated the Muslim minority in Yugoslavia. The President of the Bosnian Serb Republic finally dismissed Mladic from his service in 1996.
Ratko Mladic was indicted by the ICTY for genocide and other international law violations in 1995. Mladic had an arrest warrant on him but continually lived freely in Belgrade until 2001 after which he went into hiding and was finally arrested on May 26, 2011. Mladic was immediately extradited to Hague to face the criminal charges and was convicted of charges of genocide and violation of international law. Ratko Mladic was sentenced to life imprisonment by the ICTY in 2017.
Source : Wikipedia[Ratko Mladic(2021)]
