The Dutch government has apologized to the relatives of the massacre in Srebrenica in 1995. Defense Minister Ollongren said this on Monday in a speech during the 27th anniversary of the genocide.
Ollongren made the “deepest apologies” at the cemetery in Potocari in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Herzegovina.
The Srebrenica massacre is considered the worst war crime in Europe since World War II. More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered by Bosnian Serb troops.
The mining town of Srebrenica, located in a mountainous area, was captured in 1992 by the Bosniaks, who used it as a base for attacks on Serb villages. The population increased from 5,000 to about 55,000 due to refugees who moved from the area to Srebrenica.
The UN Security Council declared Srebrenica a demilitarized ‘safe zone’ to be protected by an international peacekeeping force. But Serbs kept out the UN convoys of emergency aid and waited for the famine to take effect. Fuel, food and ammunition became scarce.
Military support was not forthcoming after Serbian attack
After an attack by Bosnian Serb forces on 3 July 1995, the UN observatories fell like dominoes. The Dutch commander, Lieutenant Colonel Thom Karremans, asked several times for NATO air support, but those requests were rejected. Dutchbat withdrew to the base in Potocari, where thousands of refugees from Srebrenica also moved.
That is where the murders and rapes took place. Men and boys were never seen again, as were most of their fellow sufferers who tried to flee over the mountains. An estimated 8,500 Bosnian Muslims fell prey to the worst genocide in Europe since World War II. The Dutch Blue Helmets were unable to prevent the massacre by the Bosnian Serb troops.
In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that the State acted unlawfully with regard to a group of approximately 350 male refugees who were in the compound on 13 July 1995. The Netherlands subsequently decided to institute a compensation scheme.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologized to hundreds of Dutchbat veterans in June for the cabinet’s actions regarding the drama in Srebrenica. He considered the Dutch state responsible for the circumstances in which the veterans were sent out and “the lack of support when Dutchbat III was wrongfully placed in the dock”.
This message is being completed.