Thousands of Srebrenica victims await compensation from the Netherlands

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AA) – Since June 15, 2021, a total of 6,420 people have applied for compensation as relatives of 350 victims of the Srebrenica genocide during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, the spokesman for the Netherlands Compensation Commission Potocari has said.

Frank Neervoort noted that the commission paid 860 victims’ relatives and rejected 730 compensation applications, while there were 4,830 people waiting for their applications to be finalized.

The Dutch Ministry of Defense has paid €8.6 million ($9.1 million) in compensation so far, he said, adding “the spouses of those who died in the Srebrenica genocide are paid €15,000, while the children, parents and siblings of the deceased are paid €10,000 each.”

Regarding the pending applications, Neervoort noted that they take “a very long time to be examined. Applications received at the office in Sarajevo are translated. Later, in cases where the experts here do not find the documents and evidence sufficient, we can ask the relatives of the victims to present witnesses.”

The commission will continue to receive applications until June 14, 2023, he said, adding “we think these numbers will rise even higher.”

The Dutch Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that Dutch UN peacekeepers “acted unlawfully” when they evacuated the men from their military base near Srebrenica on July 13, 1995, handing them over to the Bosnian Serb forces despite knowing that they “were in serious jeopardy of being abused and murdered.”

Yet the Supreme Court said the Dutch soldiers’ responsibility was “very limited” and had only 10% liability for the deaths of the 350 men compared to the previous figure of 30% liability set by an appeals court in 2017.

The Srebrenica mothers took the appeal decision regarding the “partial” conviction of the Dutch soldiers and the reduction of their share of responsibility to 10% to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed after Bosnian Serb forces attacked the UN “safe area” of Srebrenica in July 1995, despite the presence of Dutch troops tasked with acting as international peacekeepers.

Hundreds of Bosniak Muslim families are still searching for missing people as a large number of victims were thrown into mass graves around the country during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War.

The Srebrenica massacre targeting Bosnian Muslims by occupying Serbian troops was the biggest atrocity in Europe since the Second World War. The tragedy has left indelible scars on thousands of families in the Balkan region.