The Dutch government formally apologized Saturday to soldiers who were sent as U.N. peacekeepers to defend the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica with insufficient firepower and manpower to keep the peace.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte addressed hundreds of veterans of the Dutchbat III peacekeeping unit on Saturday at a military base in the central Netherlands, telling them that after nearly 27 years “some words have still not been said.”
The soldiers — veterans now — were overrun by more heavily armed Bosnian Serb forces led by Gen. Ratko Mladic who went on to massacre 8,000 Muslim men and boys in July 1995, in a bloodbath that an international war crimes tribunal labeled genocide.
The ceremony came after a report was published last year into the experiences of the roughly 850 troops who made up Dutchbat III.
The study made recommendations including that the government make a “collective gesture” to address what it called “the perceived lack of recognition and appreciation, given the exceptional circumstances in which the near-impossible has been asked” of the Dutch peacekeepers.
The Netherlands has long wrestled with the legacy of the Srebrenica massacre.
Then Prime Minister Wim Kok resigned in 2002 after a report harshly criticized Dutch authorities for sending soldiers into a danger zone without a proper mandate or the weapons needed to protect about 30,000 refugees who had fled to the Dutch base in eastern Bosnia.
In 2019, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that the Netherlands was partially liable in the deaths of about 350 Muslim men murdered by Bosnian Serb forces during the massacre.
Discover more from LN247
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
