Over 10,000 signed an online petition to revoke the decision on awarding Austrian author Peter Handke with Nobel Prize in literature, over his controversial statements on the conflict of the 1990s in former Yugoslavia.

The petition was launched hours after the news on the new Nobel laureate, which triggered reactions in Bosnia, mostly among the victims’ associations and Bosniak representatives.

“Peter Hendke is an apologist for the “butcher of Balkans” Slobodan Milosevic. Person who was responsible for wrongful death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and tens of thousands of raped women and men. A person who defends such a monster does not deserve a simplest literary recognition let alone a Nobel Prize. Let us send a loud and clear message to the Nobel Prize Committee, that we do not condone rewarding apologists of mass murderers,” said the petition launched on Change.org online platform.

Handke won the award “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.”

His debut novel “Die Hornissen” (“The Hornets”) was published in 1966, and his other works include the 1969 play “Publikumsbeschimpfung” (“Offending the Audience”).

Handke has become “one of the most influential writers in Europe after the Second World War,” according to the Nobel committee.