The Bosnian leadership protested bitterly to the Netherlands on Tuesday over the awards of medals to Dutch peacekeepers who stood by and did nothing during the infamous massacre, in 1995, of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica.
Haris Silajdzic, a former prime minister and a member of the three-man Bosnian presidency, said he had called in the Dutch ambassador in Sarajevo to demand an explanation for the military ceremony that was conducted at a barracks in eastern Holland on Monday.
Dutch Defense Minister Henk Kamp unveiled a plaque at the barracks praising the troops who failed to act to prevent the atrocity at Srebrenica when the Bosnian Serb commander, General Ratko Mladic, seized the enclave in eastern Bosnia, separated the males from the women and children and then organized the mass murder of almost 8,000 men over 10 days in July 1995.
The episode constituted the worst single atrocity of the 1992 to 1995 war in Bosnia and the only event in the 42-month war that the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague has categorized as genocide.
General Mladic has been charged with genocide but has been a fugitive for 11 years.
An official inquiry in 2002 cleared the troops of complicity but criticized the Dutch authorities, triggering a symbolic resignation of the Dutch government.
Families of the victims have been trying to sue the Dutch state in the courts in the Netherlands because of alleged co-responsibility for the massacre.
Mass graves containing the remains of victims are still being discovered and bodies exhumed.
But on Monday in Assen, Kamp handed out medals to 500 members of the Dutch battalion stationed at Srebrenica, a so-called UN safe haven, ostensibly under protection when it was overrun by the Serbs.
"We are doing this to support our people," Kamp said. "These people are in the military ... It is difficult for them and we want to support them," he added.
The medals were to acknowledge that the Dutch troops had "for years wrongly been held responsible for what happened in the enclave," Kamp said.
Tom Karremans, the Dutch commander at Srebrenica present at the ceremony on Monday, was photographed socializing and drinking with General Mladic. The Dutch were said to have obtained the release of 14 kidnapped peacekeepers in return for not obstructing the Serbian operation.
Protests were staged in Sarajevo and other Bosnian towns denouncing the military decorations as "scandalous."
Protests were also held in the Netherlands.
FRAUD ALLEGED: The leader of an opposition alliance made allegations of electoral irregularities and called for a protest in Tirana as European leaders are to meet Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party scored a large victory in parliamentary elections, securing him his fourth term, official results showed late on Tuesday. The Socialist Party won 52.1 percent of the vote on Sunday compared with 34.2 percent for an alliance of opposition parties led by his main rival Sali Berisha, according to results released by the Albanian Central Election Commission. Diaspora votes have yet to be counted, but according to initial results, Rama was also leading there. According to projections, the Socialist Party could have more lawmakers than in 2021 elections. At the time, it won 74 seats in the
A Croatian town has come up with a novel solution to solve the issue of working parents when there are no public childcare spaces available: pay grandparents to do it. Samobor, near the capital, Zagreb, has become the first in the country to run a “Grandmother-Grandfather Service,” which pays 360 euros (US$400) a month per child. The scheme allows grandparents to top up their pension, but the authorities also hope it will boost family ties and tackle social isolation as the population ages. “The benefits are multiple,” Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot told reporters. “Pensions are rather low and for parents it is sometimes
CANCER: Jose Mujica earned the moniker ‘world’s poorest president’ for giving away much of his salary and living a simple life on his farm, with his wife and dog Tributes poured in on Tuesday from across Latin America following the death of former Uruguayan president Jose “Pepe” Mujica, an ex-guerrilla fighter revered by the left for his humility and progressive politics. He was 89. Mujica, who spent a dozen years behind bars for revolutionary activity, lost his battle against cancer after announcing in January that the disease had spread and he would stop treatment. “With deep sorrow, we announce the passing of our comrade Pepe Mujica. President, activist, guide and leader. We will miss you greatly, old friend,” Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi wrote on X. “Pepe, eternal,” a cyclist shouted out minutes later,
MIGRATION: The Supreme Court justices said they were not deciding whether Trump could legally use the Alien Enemies Act to deport undocumented migrants US President Donald Trump on Friday lashed out at the US Supreme Court after it blocked his bid to resume deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members, saying the justices are “not allowing me to do what I was elected to do.” Trump’s berating of the high court, in a post on Truth Social, came after it dealt another setback to his attempt to swiftly expel alleged Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang members using an obscure wartime law, the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA). Trump has been at loggerheads with the judiciary ever since he returned to the White House, venting
RSS