The Netherlands commemorates Srebrenica

In various places in the Netherlands people on Saturday remembered the Srebrenica massacre of 20 years ago in the Bosnian War.

During the annual commemoration in The Hague a few hundred people walked a peace march, called Mars Mira, like in Bosnia from Wassenaar to Het Plein square in The Hague.

There the Bosnian community in the Netherlands, together with solidarity organizations, held a memorial, where among others a survivor and a Bosnian imam spoke.

On July 11, 1995, the enclave of Srebrenica fell to the Bosnian Serb army and around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were reportedly killed in Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.

The UN protected "safe haven" proved to be not safe at all and the Dutch battalion Dutchbat was not able to protect the victims, resulting in a national trauma for the Dutch.

The newly identified victims of the massacre were buried in Potocari, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on Saturday and in The Hague balloons with their names were released in the air.

In Amsterdam a symposium was held with the theme "20 years after Srebrenica: What lessons learned", while in the evening the National Symphony Orchestra gave a memorial concert in the Buiksloterkerk.

The Memorial Center Camp Westerbork, a former Nazi camp in World War II, in the province of Drenthe, presented the exhibition Dutchbat Graffiti 1994-1995, with a selection of wall paintings and drawings made by the Dutch troops in the compound.

Meanwhile in the Potocari Memorial Center in Bosnia, the former base of Dutchbat, Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Bert Koenders gave a speech, after having spoken to relatives of the victims on Friday already.

"The genocide committed here was a black page in our European history," he said, stressing "The atrocity that took place here should never be forgotten." Endit