THE HAGUE: Survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre opened a civil suit against the Dutch government yesterday, saying Dutch peacekeepers should have protected the victims of Europe’s worst massacre since World War II.
“They did not prevent the murder of thousands of civilians,” the group’s lawyer Marco Gerritsen told the Hague court, where the case is finally being heard.
The suit was first brought in 2007 by victims’ group the Mothers of Srebrenica, in connection with the massacre during Bosnia’s bloody three-year war in the early 1990s.
The tiny Muslim enclave of Srebrenica was under UN protection until July 11, 1995 when it was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces under the command of General Ratko Mladic.
Mladic’s troops brushed aside the lightly-armed Dutch peacekeepers, called the Dutch battalion or Dutchbat, in the “safe area” where thousands of Muslims from surrounding villages had gathered for protection.
In the subsequent days, almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered and their bodies dumped in mass graves in the worst bloodshed on European soil since World War II.
The Dutchbat troops failed to intervene and subsequently withdrew.
Lawyer Gerritsen said “the protection of civilians is an over-riding principle.”
Another lawyer, Simon van der Sluijs added: “The Dutchbat’s own safety was their priority — in contravention of UN instructions.”
The Mothers of Srebrenica, which represents some 6,000 widows and victims’ relatives, have been seeking justice for several years for the massacre, which the UN’s highest International Court of Justice has ruled was genocide.
AFP
