Dutch Deny Potocari Grave Charges
They say they’ve never sought to keep the location of the site from the public.
Dutch Deny Potocari Grave Charges
They say they’ve never sought to keep the location of the site from the public.
The Dutch ministry of defence this week denied allegations that it has withheld information about an “emergency grave” containing the remains of Bosnian Muslim civilians who died on the United Nations compound near Srebrenica in July 1995.
The grave was dug by Dutch soldiers who were members of the UN peacekeeping force stationed in the eastern Bosnian enclave, which was designated a safe area in 1993.
However, Bosnian Serb forces seized the enclave in July 1995, and, shortly before, several thousand Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians sought shelter at the UN compound in nearby Potocari. Some died there due to extremely poor living conditions.
The Dutch soldiers then buried the dead civilians in an “emergency grave”, a spokesman for the ministry of defence confirmed to IWPR, stressing that it was not a mass grave. He said the number of people in the grave is most likely “fewer than ten” though accounts vary.
In the days that followed, some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys would be murdered by Bosnian Serb forces. The massacre is considered the worst single atrocity to occur on European soil since World War II, and has also been declared a genocide by two international courts in The Hague.
The current focus on the grave stems from a June 20 episode of the Dutch news programme, Nieuwsuur, during which former Dutch battalion soldier Dave Maats claims that the Dutch government has information on the location of the grave which they have refused to disclose.
A few years ago, he sued the government in an attempt to compel the release of debriefing statements given by the Dutch soldiers after the events in 1995, but judges sided with the government and said those have to remain confidential. The case is currently on appeal.
At the end of the television programme, the defence minister Hans Hillen said they would search through the debriefing statements to try to find information on the location of the grave, which they will then make public to Maat and others who have requested it.
As of June 30, a spokesman for the ministry said this process was still underway and could take quite some time.
“We have multiple records about where the grave should be and there are different locations, so we don’t know which one is correct,” he told IWPR.
He said “it has nothing to do with not wanting to tell where the grave is” because the ministry already provided information on where they thought the grave was for the so-called NIOD report, published in 2002 by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation and commission by the Dutch government.
The report caused a furore in The Netherlands and led to the resignation of the then prime minister, Wim Kok.
However, the location of the grave cited in the NIOD report did not end up being correct, the spokesman said.
“In the NIOD report there was a location, coordinates on a military map, but if you take a map and draw out those coordinates, you end up on the road,” he said. “Those coordinates can’t possibly be right.”
He stressed that all the information the ministry has is from people who were in Srebrenica at the time, “and they gave their best accounts, but not all people were correct”.
When asked why the existence of the grave wasn’t disclosed after the debriefing statements were taken in 1995, the spokesman said “it happened sixteen years ago so I couldn’t possibly say [why]”.
“I don’t know which people were involved then or what their reasons were to act as they did,” he said.
The actions of the Dutch soldiers and commanders in Srebrenica have long been criticised.
Survivors have initiated civil proceedings against both The Netherlands and the UN, though these have so far been unsuccessful in court. An appeals judgement in one of the cases against the Dutch state is due on July 5.
Last year, the public prosecutor’s office of The Netherlands opened a criminal investigation into the actions of the Dutch soldiers after receiving a complaint filed on behalf of Hasan Nuhanovic and the family of Rizo Mustafic.
Nuhanovic worked as a translator for the UN and has stated that Dutch commanders forced his family members to leave the UN compound in Potocari on July 13, 1995. Nuhanovic’s father was found in a mass grave in 2007, as was his brother in 2010.
Mustafic, who was working as an electrician for the Dutch battalion, was forced to leave the compound and has been missing since then, reads the complaint.
Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
