BELGRADE -- Both sides are entrenching as a dispute escalates in the streets of the Serbian capital over a graffiti tribute to one of the Balkans' most notorious war criminals, jailed former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic.
At stake are a 3-month-old work of illegal art and the right to command -- or deny -- public attention.
But Serbia's perceived commitment to justice and reconciliation is also on the line, with the authorities being criticized for defending the man widely blamed for some of the most painful and tragic episodes of the 1990s Yugoslav wars, including Europe's worst ethnic cleansing since World War II.
Dozens of police in riot gear blocked access on November 9 to the area around the spray-painted mural after rights groups and other activists vowed to paint over it to mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism.
Minor scuffles broke out between some of about a dozen ultranationalist defenders of the painting and its critics, some of whom chanted, "Fascists!" and "The mural must come down!"
Police detained at least six people, including two activists who allegedly threw eggs at the mural and unspecified individuals associated with Partizan, a Belgrade soccer team notorious for its hooligans and criminal ties.
Authorities said afterward that police were not protecting the mural but ensuring "public order and peace from all those who want to endanger it, regardless of whether they are in favor of removing the mural or oppose it."
The dispute over the depiction of the 78-year-old former commander, who is currently serving a life sentence in The Hague for genocide and other war crimes at Srebrenica in 1995, reflect the wounds of warfare and decades of ethnic animosity in much of the former Yugoslavia.
To many outsiders and to the groups once targeted by his Bosnian Serb troops, Mladic is a symbol of the brutal "ethnic cleansing" that killed tens of thousands and displaced millions more in the region.
Mladic's final appeal against life imprisonment in The Hague was rejected on June 8 by the International Criminal Court Mechanism, the successor to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) that spent decades prosecuting war crimes by Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Albanians, and other parties to the fighting.
But he is hailed as a hero by some Serbs, including in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina, where authorities are still searching for the remains of some of Srebrenica's 8,000 mostly Muslim victims.
The Belgrade mural depicts a uniformed Mladic in a military salute alongside the words, "General, thank you to your mother."
And Belgrade authorities appear to have made an exception for it amid anti-graffiti drives to clean up the city for its 1.3 million or so residents since it appeared on a stuccoed downtown building weeks after Mladic's life sentence was confirmed last summer.
Critics of the anonymous tribute say Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin's ban on a gathering to remove the Mladic mural and the heavy police deployment signal tacit endorsement of a Bosnian Serb behind one of the most horrific atrocities in Europe since World War II.
"The glorification of convicted war criminals has led to the fact that we have a monument to Ratko Mladic, embodied in a mural, which is protected by both the police and extremist organizations," Marko Milosavljevic, head of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights in Serbia and a leading voice for removing the painting, told RFE/RL's Balkan Service.
Milosavljevic and other organizers called off their plans to paint over the image after Vulin's ministry denied them permission to gather in front of the mural, which is on a quiet downtown street named after a 19th-century prince and bishop known as Njegos.
The authorities also discouraged counterdemonstrations at the site of the mural amid calls by right-wing and "hooligan" groups to defend it.
But Vulin, a frequently demagogic nationalist born to Bosnian Serb parents, stirred the pot further on November 5 by calling planners of the wall's makeover "vile and led by evil intent."
His ministry hinted that efforts to paint over the Mladic image would result in "images of bloodied Serbian heads."
Milosavljevic said he understood that as a threat that "paramilitary formations" with ties to Vulin "would break our heads, and his police would not protect us."
Milosavljevic said they wanted to avoid "an atmosphere of civil war," a powerful warning in a region where ethnicity and nationalism fueled intense wars in the 1990s and lingering Serb nationalism still threatens to tear apart neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Milosavljevic's NGO, which along with other critics has cited tenants' objections to the Mladic mural, filed a lawsuit in an administrative court on November 8 challenging the Interior Ministry's ban.
The graffiti -- itself illegal -- has attracted countervandals ever since it first appeared in July, but it has inevitably been repaired within hours.
Milan Filipovic, a legal adviser to the Committee of Lawyers for Human Rights (YUCOM), an NGO, argues that the police decision to ban the rally against the mural contravenes Serbia's Law on Public Assemblies and its constitution.
"The police are obliged to take all measures to enable a peaceful gathering and prevent the outbreak of violence," Filipovic told RFE/RL. "A ban is the last option -- only if the police were unable to ensure security by taking other measures, such as enlisting additional police forces."
Vulin, an ally of the late wartime Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic who has held a cabinet seat in every Serbian government since 2013, frequently embraces nationalist causes to boost the profile of his fringe Movement of Socialists.
'A Symbolic Act'
Neither President Aleksandar Vucic nor his governing Serbian Progressive Party's prime minister, Ana Brnabic, initially commented publicly on the dispute over the Mladic mural.
But after it was struck with the can of white paint on November 10, Vucic appeared to downplay the authorities' role in preventing damage to the mural.
At an appearance in a suburb of Novi Sad, he asked why detractors had organized their planned makeover of the mural for an internationally recognized day against fascism.
"Why did you make a 'show' out of it, wanting to harm Serbia?" Vucic asked.
He also noted that it had since been damaged with the white paint and rejected suggestions that Serbian state officials were protecting it, saying that "if police had been protecting the mural, no one would have destroyed the mural" on November 10.
"I don't see any reason for that to be here," a Belgrade resident named Davor, who didn't want his last name published, told RFE/RL this week. "What's next? That means that in theory someone can draw Hitler or [World War II-era Croatian fascist leader] Ante Pavelic or whatever anyone wants. Can I go draw whatever I want?"
Another, Snezana, said that "honestly, I hadn't noticed him," adding, "I'm apolitical, but why should he be here?"
Another passerby said she thought that all but "the most positive" graffiti should be cleaned up.
One woman said there's so much graffiti in the city that "one more or one less won't make any difference." She added, "I like Ratko Mladic [so] I don't mind."
A Yugoslav People's Army veteran who later commanded troops under a makeshift Republika Srpska army in 1992-95, Mladic for years evaded international arrest before his capture in Serbia in 2011.
He was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, and other war crimes by the ICTY in 2017 and sentenced to life in prison for his leading role in the 1,425-day siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica genocide.
The ICTY concluded that Mladic ordered the execution-style killings of 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb troops after UN peacekeepers abandoned protection in a "safe area" around Srebrenica in July 1995.
One of the two activists detained for throwing eggs at the mural on November 9, Aida Corovic, said it was a "symbolic act" to protest the Mladic depiction.
Dozens of protesters converged on the scene well into the evening to express support for Corovic and the other activist. Both were released after a few hours.
"We have targeted the mural of a convicted golden criminal," Corovic said. "We will be punished symbolically, and the mural is being protected."
