Porfirije and the European Commission race to the bottom

For several days now, ever since the transformation of one of the worst war criminals into yet another myth heralding future wars began, and ever since even many otherwise decent people started sinking into the mire of relativization, justification, condemnation accompanied by caveats, and attempts at understanding, I have been struggling with a profound sense of revulsion toward the whole thing, along with the need to write something about it. The easiest thing would be to write a general article packed with facts, not only about Ratko Mladić and his criminal path, but also about the project behind that path and those who inspired it, to conclude that the whole thing is repulsive, and then rest easy knowing that I had written my piece.

But somehow, that makes no sense. It makes no sense because there is nothing here that needs explaining. All those who celebrate Ratko Mladić, including an enormous percentage of Serbia’s citizens and Serbs as a whole, the Serbian state and the Republika Srpska entity, and almost the entire Serbian Orthodox Church, headed by Porfirije, have no doubts whatsoever, nor are they unaware of who Ratko Mladić was and what crimes he committed. After all, Red Star Belgrade, together with its supporters, removed any remaining doubt with their banner reading, “Straight to Potočari.”

So what exactly is there to explain to such people? To people who support genocide, ethnic cleansing, the shelling of cities, massacres of civilians, and other practices of Mladić’s army.

The only good thing about this entire story is that, after such eulogies and this state-sponsored farewell, the old claims that people did not know what was happening, or that Mladić acted on his own, went rogue, slipped out of anyone’s control, and so on, simply no longer hold. In that respect, this is absolutely fair. Serbian nationalist imperial ideology set the stage for all of this at the ideological level; the authorities in Belgrade, led by Slobodan Milošević, financed and directed it at the operational level; the Serbian Orthodox Church gave it its blessing. It is only fitting, then, that they should bid farewell to Ratko Mladić as one of their own.

However, two questions remain. The first is how these people imagine they are going to continue living in this region alongside everyone else. The second is the horrifying silence of almost the entire society in the face of this horror. With the exception, of course, of the same group of people who have long since been dismissed as “auto-chauvinists” by most of the public. For example, the students were extremely concerned about the demolition and sale of the General Staff complex, yet apparently have no problem with state honors being paid to a man sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide.

The answer to the first question is as painful as it is disturbing. These people simply do not intend and do not want to live with others, and by celebrating Mladić they are announcing another war. A war that I am increasingly convinced will actually happen.

The answer to the second question might be that it is understandable that people are afraid to speak out, and that the majority, always and everywhere, tends to be opportunistic. But this is not even really about opportunism. It is about widespread approval of posthumous honors being paid to absolute evil, and therefore about the continuation of the same policy even after a possible change of government. That policy has logically brought Serbia and the Serbs precisely to where they are today, something that a significant part of Serbian society clearly has a problem with. Yet somehow, it has great difficulty connecting those two things. Indeed, they mostly attack those who point this out to them, calling them disgusting liberals and Serb-haters.

In this whole affair, however, the ones who have sunk lowest, all the way to the bottom, are Porfirije and the European Commission. But the latter matter less. Shame is, after all, endemic among professional politicians and bureaucrats, although insulting people’s intelligence by claiming that Mladić did not receive a state funeral is excessive even by their standards.

Porfirije, however, is another matter. Regardless of the fact that I have no favorable opinion of Porfirije and have been writing that publicly for years, I still did not believe a person could be quite so shameless.

I read his words: “We know that his name will remain deeply woven into the memory and prayers of the greater part of the Serbian Orthodox people, who feel and nurture profound gratitude toward him because they see him as a soldier and commander who, in a difficult and tragic time, stood at the head of his people’s army and gave his life for the freedom and survival of his kin. We stand before a life that cannot be separated from a terrible time, a horrific war, lost homes, lives, and graves. Therefore, as we pray for the soul of the deceased, we also pray for all those whose lives were extinguished.”

And I cannot quite describe my feelings when I read this. Revulsion, perhaps, more than anything else. He came just short of bestowing sainthood upon the man who shelled Zadar and Šibenik; the man who bears responsibility for the massacre in Škabrnja, for the siege of Sarajevo, and whose appearance in Srebrenica, where he played the humanitarian immediately before the execution of more than eight thousand people, has become infamous. To the Patriarch, this constitutes a struggle for the freedom and survival of a people.

Let me now return to the beginning – to the awareness of how pointless it is to explain any of this or to write a conventional article about it.

You see, my grandmother’s family were Serbs from Čapljina. Half of her family were killed by local Ustaše in the notorious Prebilovci massacre. Those who survived mostly saved themselves by joining the Partisans. My grandmother and her sister married Croats and harbored no prejudice or distrust toward them. My grandmother’s younger brother, my father’s uncle, married a Muslim woman from Čapljina. He was an excellent footballer and a legend of Željezničar. They had a wonderful life in Sarajevo and a weekend house in Pale, and when the war came, it never crossed my uncle’s mind to go to Pale and join those who were firing on his city. The Serbs in my family who decided to remain in their own cities, Čapljina, Mostar, Sarajevo, because they clearly understood what was on the other side, survived the shells fired by that same Mladić, while at the same time enduring the suspicious looks of many neighbors who, more or less openly, suspected that they too were “one of them.” Meanwhile, most Serbs accused them of being “Alija’s Serbs” or “Tuđman’s Serbs.” My maternal grandfather trained as a waiter in Sarajevo just before the Second World War. When the Ustaše came to power and began killing Serbs, he saw what was happening and set off on foot toward his native Herzegovina. There he joined the Partisans, not the Chetniks. He endured their ordeal, including the Battle of the Sutjeska, was wounded, met my grandmother, a Muslim woman, during the liberation of Mostar, and married her.

From the perspective of Porfirije, Republika Srpska, the Serbian state, and all those currently denouncing others as traitors, these people were not really Serbs at all. Certainly not among those who “gave their lives for the freedom and survival of their kin,” as Porfirije puts it. Which is rather strange, because they were precisely the ones who remained in their homes and homelands.

The whole thing is shameful. So profoundly shameful, if only there were anyone left capable of feeling shame.

Translated by Marijana Simić

Peščanik.net, 10.09.2026.