Dutch authorities expressed their "deepest apologies" to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre that killed roughly 8,000 people as 50 newly-identified victims were honored and reburied on Monday in Bosnia.
The horrific tragedy is Europe's only acknowledged genocide since the Holocaust and commemorates its 27th anniversary this year. One resident, identified as Idriz Mustafic, attended the collective funeral to bury the partial remains of his son, Salim.
Srebrenica Massacre Anniversary
The young boy was only 16 years old when he was killed in Srebrenica in July 1995 while trying to flee the town as it was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces in the closing months of Bosnia's 1992-95 war. The father said, "My older son, Enis, was also killed. We buried him in 2005. Now I am burying Salim."
The resident added that forensic experts have yet to find his skill and added that his wife got cancer and had to undergo surgery, stifling any hopes of waiting longer to bury the bones that have already been found. They wanted to at least know where their children's graves were located, as per the Associated Press.
The brutal Srebrenica killings were the bloody crescendo of Bosnia's war in the mid-1990s that came after the breakup of Yugoslavia unleashed nationalistic passions and territorial ambitions that set Bosnian Serbs against the country's two other main ethnic factions, Croats and Bosniaks.
Bosnian Serbs overran a UN-protected safe haven in Srebrenica in July 1995 and separated at least 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from their wives, mothers, and sisters. They chased them through the woods around the eastern town and slaughtered them.
According to Aljazeera, Dutch peacekeepers were outgunned and outnumbered, making them unable to prevent the Bosnian Serbs from advancing. In a statement, Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said that only one party bore responsibility for the horrific genocide, the Bosnian Serb army. The remarks were made on Monday during a visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Acknowledging Responsibility
She added, "But let me be clear. The international community failed to offer adequate protection to the people of Srebrenica and as part of that community, the Dutch government shares responsibility for the situation in which that failure occurred. And for this, we offer our deepest apologies," while putting her hand to her heart.
The official said that the events of the 1995 massacre led to deep human suffering that is palpable here to this day. Ollongren said that while they cannot relieve the victims of their suffering, they can look history "straight in the eye."
The chairman of the organizing committee for the commemoration of the anniversary, Hamdija Fejzic, who is also the deputy head of the Srebrenica municipality, said he was fortunate enough to have survived the genocide, which he referred to as a "defeat of humanity."
He added that the horrific events of those times must never become just a footnote in the history of mankind. Fejzic urged officials in Bosnia-Herzegovina to take concrete steps to make the region a "city of life, not a place of death," RFERL reported.
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