BELGRADE, Serbia (AA): The decision by a Dutch court of appeal on Tuesday holding the Dutch government “partially liable” for the deaths of some 300 Muslim men during the 1995 Srebrenica massacre is a “great injustice,” according to the head of Mothers of Srebrenica Association.
“Today I have suffered a great injustice. This judgment does not only concern me, but all Muslims. It is a judgment in which they [the Netherlands] could not accept responsibility for the [death of] ten thousand Muslims although they are responsible,” Almedina Pasic said in a statement.
Presiding Judge of The Hague Court of Appeal, Gepke Dulek said in the ruling that Dutch soldiers “deprived 300 Bosnian men of the chance of survival” by taking them out of the UN military camp.
The court also ruled that 30 percent of the compensation demanded by the relatives of the victims should be covered by the Dutch government.
Almedina Pasic, who lost her father — a member of the Dutch battalion of UN peacekeepers — in the genocide committed against the Bosniaks 22 years ago, said she expected more, calling the judgment “insufficient”.
“I was expecting a lot more. I expected that after all this time, they would say, ‘Yes, we are guilty’, but that did not happen,” Pasic said.
In March, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also accused the Netherlands of complicity in the Srebrenica massacre.
Erdogan’s remarks came after a political row between the Netherlands and Turkey after the Dutch government refused to allow some Turkish politicians from addressing Turkish nationals in Rotterdam on the April 16 constitutional referendum.
“We know the Netherlands and the Dutch from the Srebrenica massacre,” he said.
About 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed after the Bosnian Serb army attacked the UN “safe area” of Srebrenica in July 1995, despite the presence of Dutch troops tasked with acting as international peacekeepers.
In July 2014, a Dutch court ordered the Netherlands to compensate the families of more than 300 Srebrenica victims, saying the peacekeepers should have known they would be killed.
