The Dutch government formally apologised to soldiers sent as UN peacekeepers to defend the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica with insufficient firepower and manpower to keep the peace.
The soldiers – veterans now – were overrun by more heavily armed Bosnian Serb forces led by General 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 labelled genocide.
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 after nearly 27 years,
“Today, I apologise on behalf of the Dutch government to all the women and men of Dutchbat III,” Rutte said.
The Netherlands has long wrestled with the legacy of the Srebrenica massacre. Then-Prime Minister Wim Kok resigned in 2002 after a report harshly criticised Dutch authorities for sending soldiers into a danger zone without a proper mandate or the weapons needed to protect about 30,000 refugees.
Credit: Aljazeera.com
