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Prime Minister Mark Rutte
Photo: REMKO DE WAAL / EPA
Almost 27 years after the Srebrenica genocide, the Dutch government has apologized for the treatment of its own soldiers, who were supposed to protect the Bosnian enclave in 1995 as UN blue helmets.
The Dutchbat III unit was sent to the war zone with an "impossible mission," Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Saturday at a veterans' ceremony in Schaarsbergen near Arnhem in the east of the country.
The UN unit was too lightly armed and therefore powerless and could not prevent the genocide.
In July 1995, during the war in former Yugoslavia, Serbian units overran the Srebrenica UN protection zone.
The Dutch UN blue helmets offered no resistance.
Serbian soldiers then murdered around 8,000 Muslim Bosnian men and boys.
The Srebrenica genocide is considered the worst war crime committed on European soil since World War II.
Soldiers with post-traumatic disorders went unrecognized for years
For years the soldiers had been accused of cowardice and failure.
In addition, post-traumatic disorders of veterans were not recognized.
Many of them felt let down by this.
In front of several hundred veterans and their families, the prime minister apologized on behalf of the government.
Rutte stressed that the Bosnian Serbs, such as Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and then-General Ratko Mladic, were to blame for the genocide.
But the international community has also failed.
"The world has failed terribly."
Defense Minister Kasja Ollongren also said that "the impossible" had been demanded of the soldiers.
When they returned from the mission, there was too little follow-up care and support against false blame in public.
Last year, the Dutch government had already promised recognition of the veterans.
At that time, Dutchbat veterans also received a bonus of 5,000 euros each.
dop/dpa