A petition on Change.org which asks for the Nobel Prize for literature to be taken away from this year’s recipient, Peter Handke, was already signed by more than 50,000 people, although it has only been initiated about a month ago.

“Peter Handke is an apologist for the “butcher of Balkans” Slobodan Milosevic. A person who was responsible for the wrongful death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and tens of thousands of raped women and men,” the petition says.

“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,” it says.

The text is accompanied by a photo of a Serb paramilitary fighter kicking a dying Bosniak woman in Bijeljina in 1992, taken by Ron Haviv.

The petition also says that a protest is scheduled to take place in Stockholm on December 10th regarding Handke’s Nobel Prize.

“As a Victim of Genocide in Srebrenica I hope this man Peter Handke lets me personally tell him what has happened there and what has happened to my family,” one of the comments on the petition website says.