Orasje, Tomislavgrad Sack Doctors Over Mladic Praise

A wave of firings and severed contracts in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, triggered by the death of General Ratko Mladic, is deepening tensions between the country’s two entities and touching Serbia as well, since it involves public reactions to the death of a man whose name still divides opinion in Republika Srpska, while in the Federation any public sympathy for him is now punished even in the workplace. The Orasje Cantonal Hospital ended, on August 31, the part time contract of surgeon Djoko Novakovic over a social media post in which he paid tribute to Mladic. That same day, a doctor at the Tomislavgrad health center was also dismissed, while the academy of football club Sarajevo cut ties with a young goalkeeper from its own ranks.

All three cases took place on August 31, four days after news broke of Mladic’s death on August 27, 2026. The timeline shows a decision that took shape over several days, not an instantaneous reaction in the hours after the news, as the earliest reports might have suggested.

Novakovic, a doctor from Bijeljina where he holds his primary job, worked at the Orasje hospital as an outside, part time associate. His dismissal came after the Bosnian Posavina HVO Military Police Veterans association demanded that hospital management sanction him and end the arrangement immediately. In its request, the association said it was unacceptable for someone in Orasje to publicly glorify the commander of the Army of Republika Srpska, under whose command, it claims, a crime was committed in the Posavina area. Hospital management granted the request the same day.

A nearly identical case unfolded in Tomislavgrad, where the health center moved just as quickly to terminate an employee’s contract over the same trigger. Sources diverge on one detail here: the Srna news agency reports that the person dismissed was a doctor identified by the initials J. J, while the Klix.ba news portal writes that a female doctor at the same health center lost her job. Which of the two accounts is accurate has not been independently confirmed, though both sources agree the reason for the dismissal was identical to the one in Orasje: a post glorifying a convicted war criminal.

Sports organizations were not spared either. The academy of football club Sarajevo cut ties with a young goalkeeper from its own ranks, identified in reports by the initials V. V, after the goalkeeper’s father shared a photo on his social media profile with the message, “Thank you for everything, General.” The club said there was no place in its ranks, in its words, for those who promote convicted war criminals. Federal media outlets, despite the fact that the player is a young academy member, published his full name, a detail the Srna agency specifically flagged, noting that it exposed him to public pressure he had not brought on himself.

For Serbia and Republika Srpska, this wave of dismissals is not an isolated event but part of a broader pattern in which every public reaction to Ratko Mladic’s death in the region turns into a political, and now also a labor, dispute. Srpske novine has previously reported on criminal complaints filed against Knezevic and Metodija over their statements on Mladic’s death, showing that the fallout from this news is not confined to a single entity or a single profession. While part of the public in Republika Srpska still presents Mladic as a military commander, in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina any public sympathy toward him, including sympathy expressed on a private social media profile, now carries immediate consequences for one’s employment, whether that means a doctor at a cantonal hospital or a teenager in a football academy.

Neither the Orasje Cantonal Hospital nor the Tomislavgrad health center has so far signaled any review of its dismissal decisions, and the FK Sarajevo academy has not said whether the young goalkeeper will get a chance to return to the club once public attention around the case fades. It also remains open whether the pattern will repeat in the coming days, given that this is already the third recorded case of a workplace sanction in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina over a publicly expressed view on Ratko Mladic within the span of a few days.