Supporters of Serbian football club Red Star Belgrade observed a minute's silence and displayed a giant banner reading "Pravac Potocari" in tribute to Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander convicted of genocide, during the 'Eternal Derby' against city rivals Partizan on September 7, 2025.

Mladic, who died in The Hague on August 27 while serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, was responsible for the massacre of over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995. The banner refers to the village of Potocari, where UN peacekeepers were stationed and where refugees gathered before the killings.

The tribute came just days after UEFA fined Red Star €98,250 for a similar banner dedicated to Mladic displayed during a Europa League playoff match in Plzen, Czech Republic. The punishment also included a ban on Red Star fans traveling to the next two European away games.

This is not an isolated incident. Partizan's hardcore fan group, the Grobari, had also displayed a banner reading "General, thank you" a week earlier. Experts point to a long-standing nexus between football hooliganism, nationalism, and politics in Serbia, dating back to the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Slobodan Georgiev, news director at TV Nova S, called the minute's silence "the most shameful event this stadium has witnessed," noting that glorification of war criminals is common but official tribute with a minute's silence marks a new low. He alleged that fan groups are manipulated by the state for political purposes.

Sasa Djordevic, senior analyst at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, warned that such incidents risk becoming normalized, and that fines imposed on clubs do not affect the actual perpetrators. He stressed that Serbia has adequate laws but fails to enforce them consistently.

Source: www.aljazeera.com