“It is a journey with a smile and a tear”, Dutchbat veteran Ebel Dijkman looks back on his trip to Srebrenica last week, 28 years after the fall of the enclave, which killed some 8,500 people.
It was not the first time that Dijkman returned, but it was the first time with a group of men with whom he was there 28 years ago. “There were nine of us. I had invited more, but these people said yes,” says Dijkman in the RTV Drenthe program cassata.
He took advantage of the opportunity to make that trip as a veteran at the expense of Defense. Ebel Dijkman was one of the hundreds of Dutchbat 3 soldiers from Assen who were involved in the fall of Srebrenica on 11 July 1995. Last year they received an apology from the cabinet, a badge of honor, 5,000 euros as a kind of financial compensation, and the chance to make a return trip to Bosnia with the Veterans Institute.