Several thousand people gathered in Pale in Bosnia and Herzegovina to pay tribute to Ratko Mladic - the man sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide in Srebrenica. They lit candles and torches, chanted his name, sang songs in his honour. Some touched a large framed photograph of him, and some kissed the Serbian flag.

Mladic died on 27 August in a hospital in The Hague, aged 84, while serving his life sentence. The international tribunal convicted him in 2017 of genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws of war. That is not a political assessment but a final verdict from a court whose jurisdiction every state in the region recognised.

The gatherings were not only in Pale

Similar gatherings were held in Zvornik, Visegrad, Foca, Novi Grad and elsewhere in the Serb entity. In Zvornik nationalist slogans were shouted, among them "Knife, wire, Srebrenica" - a sentence that is not a slogan but a description of a crime. Banners with Mladic's face appeared in several towns.

In Pale, the war veterans' organisation publicly called on residents to light candles. A church memorial service was also held, as part of the town's patron saint celebration. Pale was the political centre of the Bosnian Serbs during the war from 1992 to 1995 - the administration led by Radovan Karadzic sat there.

The law exists. The question is who applies it

And here is the crucial part of this story. The 2021 criminal code of Bosnia and Herzegovina prohibits the glorification of anyone convicted of genocide or war crimes. The prosecution has already filed indictments connected to the public glorification of Mladic.

So the law is not an abstraction, nor a proposal. It exists, it is in force, and it has already been applied. And yet, on one and the same day, in at least five towns, thousands of people break it openly, in front of cameras, with torches in their hands. Who will answer for it? And what is an article of law worth if it activates several months later, when the violation is being filmed live?

Kissing the Serbian flag at these gatherings is a direct echo of the gesture by Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic in May 2023, when he kissed the flag after the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on the Srebrenica genocide. The resolution designated 11 July as an international day of remembrance. When the highest office in a state demonstrates the protocol, the rest repeats itself.

The Balkans have a long practice of this - everyone counts their own victims and forgets everyone else's. But this is not a dispute about interpretation. Srebrenica is a legally established genocide, not a point of view. And while the court in The Hague finished its work nine years ago, institutions in the region are still deciding whether to begin theirs at all.