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Dutch U.N. Troops Failed Muslims At Srebrenica: Church Group
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| Detainees in Srebrenica |
THE HAGUE, March 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Dutch U.N. troops posted in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995 failed to take actions that could have prevented the massacre of some 7,000 Muslim men by Serb forces, and notably ignored a Serb officer requesting them to oversee an evacuation, a church group said Thursday.
The report by the Interchurch Peace Council (IKV) stated that after the Bosnian Serb forces entered Srebrenica, then a U.N.-protected enclave for Muslims in eastern Bosnia, the peacekeeping forces turned down an alleged request by Bosnian Serb commander General Ratko Mladic for the U.N. to organize the evacuation of Muslim refugees.
The war crimes tribunal in The Hague is seeking to indict Mladic for his role in the “ethnic cleansing” of Bosnian Muslims.
The group said that this allowed the Bosnian Serb forces to set up their own evacuation of women and children, and then to kill around 7,000 Muslim men and boys in what was the worst single massacre in Europe since World War II.
Publication of the report comes days before the Dutch Institute of War Documentation (NIOD) is due to come out with its own report on the massacre, which has caused considerable soul-searching in The Netherlands due to the presence of the Dutch troops.
"The Dutch never took measures to defend the Muslims; even though they promised to do so," said Mient-Jan Faber of the IKV, presenting the report.
On July 11, 1995 Bosnian Serb forces overran the Muslim enclave and overpowered the Dutch peacekeepers, Dutchbat, stationed there.
The IKV investigation claims that it found on that evening General Mladic, the Bosnian Serb army commander, asked Dutchbat commander Ton Karremans to organize buses to evacuate the Muslims, said Faber.
Karremans and the Dutch U.N. General Cees Nicolai, stationed in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, failed to seize the opportunity to oversee the evacuation and left the Bosnian Serbs to do it themselves - with gruesome consequences, he added.
"Alternatives were possible, which, if chosen, might have led to a very different outcome, less cruel, no genocide," writes the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in its report, which was entitled "Srebrenica, the genocide that was not prevented."
According to Faber "everywhere in the chain of command, Dutch officials were involved" in the decision not to organize the evacuation of Muslim refugees, leading eventually to the massacre of Srebrenica's men.
He also pointed the finger at the Dutch government for not ordering Dutchbat to get the population out safely "even though they knew the risks for the Muslims."
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