"Our lives lay in your hands – Srebrenica mourns! No medals for Dutchbat III!”

With a banner inscribed "Our lives lay in your hands – Srebrenica mourns! No medals for Dutchbat III!” and a banner 60 metres long with the names of 8,106 dead from Srebrenica the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) is protesting today, Monday, in Assen against the decoration of Netherlands peace-keeping soldiers stationed in 1995 in the former UN safe zone. Together with relatives of those murdered workers of the human rights organisation for ethnic and religious minorities are going to read out the names of those killed.

In an open letter to the Netherlands Prime Minister Dr Jan Pieter Balkenende and Defence Minister Henricus Gregorius Jozeph (Henk) Kamp, who is expected to attend the ceremony for the Dutchbat soldiers in Assen, the GfbV is calling for an official apology and a humanitarian fund for the survivors and the inception of an international reconstruction and investment programme in the former IUN safe zone.

Here below is the text of the open letter:

Open letter

Prime Minister of the Netherlands

Dr. Jan Pieter Balkenende

Postbus 20001

2500 EA The Hague

Ministry of Defence

Defence Minister Henricus Gregorius Jozeph (Henk) Kamp

Postbus 20 701

2500 ES The Hague

Göttingen/Assen, 04.12.2006

Dear Prime Minister, Dear Minister,

Today, 4th December 2006, you will be decorating 300 Netherlands soldiers of the former Dutchbat contingent with service medals. This battalion had in 1994/95 the task of protecting the threatened population of the UN safe zone of Srebrenica from the besieging Serb forces. In the surrounding Drina valley from Zvornik down to Foca the Serb troops had already committed genocide against the Bosniaks in 1992. The region had been ethnically cleansed. The survivors were expelled.

The Netherlands troops did not protect the people of Srebrenica. They failed, like the UNO as a whole, just as Europe and the USA failed. The result is well-known: 8,376 boys and men were murdered. Hundreds, perhaps up to 2 000 children, women and elderly people lost their lives. The soldiers were witnesses of these murders and saw the corpses in the plundered houses and on the streets and squares when the Serb troops marched in. Countless elderly people and children fell victims to that dreadful stress during the flight from the 56 villages of the enclave. Young girls were raped and many disappeared for ever.

The Dutchbat Battalion bears part of the responsibility for this tragedy. The Netherlands soldiers ran away from the advancing Serbs. They did not fire a shot. During these days they took away from the defenders of the town the few remaining weapons and the little ammunition left. But they did not

even attempt to disarm the notorious murder gangs of the masked "White Tigers” of Arkan, of the "Black Eagles”, the units of Ratko Mladic or the Yugoslav army. And according to the "Doctors without Frontiers” they even refused to treat the wounded and sick Bosnians. 38 injured Bosniaks were "disposed of” by Dutchbat in the Serb hospital of Bratunac, a nearby "Bosniaks-free” town, in which in 1992 2000 Bosniaks were murdered.

"Dutchbat soldiers found in March 1994 in Srebrenica a dirty chaos”, states a Netherlands report. Thousands of men wandered aimlessly about the town.The permanent crowd of begging children, people rummaging through the rubbish. The population of the isolated town hungered, while the Dutchbat soldiers had to live for months from tins. The inhabitants lost all contact with the outside world. An amateur radio operator was the only one to keep up the contact of the people enclosed with the outside.

For what reason, dear Prime Minister, dear Minister, do you wish to decorate your unsuccessful, unhappy soldiers? We have the impression that you want to divert attention away from the responsibility of the Netherlands government, but also of other international persons responsible!

For it was the Netherlands government of the day and not the UN who gave the order for the evacuation of your troops from Srebrenica without a single thought for the thousands of inhabitants of the town, who now unarmed were struggling for their lives. Your commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Karremans exchanged gifts with Mladi? and drank to his victory. Your government forbade the soldiers to speak about the genocide. They were totally isolated for four days. Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the UN reporter, was not allowed to talk to them. Material, photos and video films disappeared after the return. Karremans was promoted and disappeared as a military attaché to the USA.

It is not so much the Dutchbat soldiers as the army commanders and the government of the Netherlands who are responsible for the treason towards the many thousand hunted and finally murdered people of Srebrenica and for the help which was refused and for the alliance with the murderers.

We call upon the Netherlands government to:

- Apologize at last to the survivors of Srebrenica

- Set up a humanitarian fund for the surviving wives and mothers of Srebrenica

- Start an international reconstruction and investment programme for Srebrenica

Dear Prime Minister, dear Minister, it was in the Netherlands too that large sections of the population refused to help the persecuted Jews. Israel pays homage today to those who protected and hid the threatened people. Please decorate those brave Netherlands citizens who in the darkest hour sped to the help of the victims of Srebrenica and those who today stand by their side.

Your Truly,

Tilman Zülch*, Society for Threatened Peoples - German Section

Andrè Rollinger, Society for Threatened Peoples - Luxembourg Section

Fadila Memiševic, Society for Threatened Peoples - Bosnia-Herzegovina Section

* Bearer of the "Srebrenica Award Against Genocide 1995” of the Mothers’ Movement