Dutch honour soldiers who stood by at Srebrenica massacre
· Bosnia calls in ambassador to protest at medals award
· Troops were part of UN force meant to protect city
Ian Traynor in Zagreb
Wednesday December 6, 2006
The Guardian
The leadership of Bosnia protested bitterly to the Netherlands
yesterday over the awards of medals to Dutch peacekeepers who stood by and did
nothing at the infamous 1995 massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims at
Srebrenica.
Haris Silajdzic, a former prime minister and a member of the three-man
Bosnian presidency, said he had called in the Dutch ambassador in Sarajevo to
demand an explanation for the military ceremony that was conducted at a
barracks in eastern Holland on Monday.
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Henk Kamp, the Dutch defence minister, unveiled a plaque at the barracks
praising the troops who failed to act to prevent the atrocity at Srebrenica
when the Bosnian Serb commander, General Ratko Mladic, seized the enclave in
eastern Bosnia, separated the males from the women and children, and then
organised the mass murder of almost 8,000 men over 10 days in July 1995.
The shocking episode constituted the worst single atrocity of the 1992-95
war in Bosnia and the only event in the 42-month war that the international
war crimes tribunal in The Hague has categorised as genocide.
Gen Mladic has been charged with genocide but has been a fugitive for 11
years.
The Dutch were shamed and traumatised by their role in the massacre. An
official inquiry in 2002 cleared the troops of complicity but criticised the
Dutch authorities, triggering a symbolic resignation of the Dutch government.
Families of the victims have been trying to sue the Dutch state in the
courts in the Netherlands because of alleged co-responsibility for the
massacre. Mass graves containing the remains of victims are still being
discovered and bodies exhumed.
But on Monday in Assen Mr Kamp handed out medals to 500 members of the
Dutch battalion stationed at Srebrenica, which was a so-called UN safe haven,
ostensibly under UN protection when it was overrun by the Serbs.
"We are doing this to support our people," said Mr Kamp. "These people
are in the military ... It is difficult for them and we want to support them,"
he added.
The medals were to acknowledge that the Dutch troops had "for years
wrongly been held responsible for what happened in the enclave," said Mr Kamp.
Tom Karremans, the Dutch commander at Srebrenica present at Monday's
ceremony, was photographed socialising and drinking with Gen Mladic. The Dutch
were said to have obtained the release of 14 kidnapped peacekeepers in return
for not obstructing the Serbian operation.
Protests were staged in Sarajevo and other Bosnian towns denouncing the
military decorations as "scandalous". There were also protests in the
Netherlands, but Bosnians who sought to travel there to demonstrate were
denied visas.
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