A vague admission of guilt for the Srebrenica massacre is not enough! UN must give themselves up to the judges and pay compensation

On the occasion of the first session in the second Srebrenica case against the Netherlands and the United Nations (UN) at The Hague today, Wednesday, the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) calls on the UN to finally accept responsibility for their failure at Srebrenica and to give themselves up to the court as the accused party. About 6000 surviving family members of the 8,373 victims known by name of the crime of genocide at Srebrenica had lodged a complaint on 4th June 2007 against the Netherlands and the United Nations to obtain satisfaction and to ensure compensation. The UN had stated that they would appeal to their immunity and were not prepared to appear before the court as a party involved.

"This case raises the whole question of the credibility of the United Nations”, said the GfbV General Secretary, Tilman Zülch. "The international community must not try to escape its responsibility towards the victims of Srebrenica, who trusted in the protection of the peace-keeping force and who were left in the lurch completely defenceless.”

In a report on the events in the former protected zone of November 1999 the UN had indeed admitted its share of the responsibility for the crime. However concrete payments of compensation for the survivors – as in the case of the survivors of the Holocaust – were never considered. The peace-keeping force from the Netherlands had withdrawn from Srebrenica a few days after the invasion of Serb troops under the command of Ratko Mladic, the war-criminal for whom an international search warrant has been issued, and the defenceless Bosnian civilian population was left to its fate, although the victors had already committed crimes in the UN protected zone.