The Netherlands: Not “Just Another Day”

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Today is the tenth anniversary of the massacre in Srebrenica. Nearly 8,000 people died. We will not forget.

It is also, by one of those rare coincidences, the day on which the trial of Mohammed Bouyeri – a Moroccan Dutch national who is accused of the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh – opens.

This must be a hard day in the Netherlands.

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About Edward Hugh

Edward 'the bonobo is a Catalan economist of British extraction. After being born, brought-up and educated in the United Kingdom, Edward subsequently settled in Barcelona where he has now lived for over 15 years. As a consequence Edward considers himself to be "Catalan by adoption". He has also to some extent been "adopted by Catalonia", since throughout the current economic crisis he has been a constant voice on TV, radio and in the press arguing in favor of the need for some kind of internal devaluation if Spain wants to stay inside the Euro. By inclination he is a macro economist, but his obsession with trying to understand the economic impact of demographic changes has often taken him far from home, off and away from the more tranquil and placid pastures of the dismal science, into the bracken and thicket of demography, anthropology, biology, sociology and systems theory. All of which has lead him to ask himself whether Thomas Wolfe was not in fact right when he asserted that the fact of the matter is "you can never go home again".

7 thoughts on “The Netherlands: Not “Just Another Day””

  1. Should the Dutch really beat themselves up so much about this? Surely it was the UN rules of engagement which prevented their troops from fighting back until it was too late.

  2. Steve,

    I agree. I think it is an impressive display of civic responsibilty that they do beat themselves up. I once watched an impressive film about the UN troops dilemma in ex-yugoslavia. I think it was about British troops in the Vucovar era, but an impressive display of well meaning impotence as well. Can’t remember the name of the movie, it worked with flashbacks from a soldier’s discussion with a lawyer preparing a military tribunal about overstepping the “rules of engagement”. Very sad all this.

  4. thanks c,

    thanks for the article. yeah… I wonder when, if ever, the whole ugly truth of all the realpolitk in the era will become an issue. Those affected will need more time to even think about beginning to examine old wounds. And western publics aren’t too interested in discovering to which extent those civil wars and ethnically motvated crimes exceeded their institutional political and military capabilities. They did – in so many ways.

  5. Thanks for the link c. About this television program I only heard that former dutch minister of defense Voorhoeve said that he should have resigned in 1995.

    There are several other reasons why “the Dutch” should beat themselves up so much about it.

    I will never forget the pictures of the military chief Karremans making jokes, and drinking alcohol with and accepting gifts from Mladic kind of *celebrating* the fall. We were not fully informed about the thousands killed then. Later Karremans defended himself in a way that basically came down to him being afraid. Mind you the military man in charge!

    But this was not the worst. Photos that were highly incriminating *incidentally* were spoilt in the studio.
    This was not the worst. A committee was formed to investigate this loss (among other things). It was headed by former education minister van Kemenade. In a couple of weeks he finished the report. “nobody was to blame”.
    Still not the worst. When the fall of Srebrenica was more seriously studied it had as an extra outcome the admission by this van Kemenade person that his comittee did not try to find the facts, he only searched for a political way out.
    The worst of course is that his political party still supports the guy in stead of kicking him out.

  6. There were a total of 5 roles of film. Different labs etc. They all failed.
    My guess is there was an Martian force field that ruined all pictures 🙂

  7. I agree that it is to the honour of the Dutch that they beat themselves up about this. I also think they damn well should, given the way the Muslims were left exposed.

    Sir Michael Rose has not escaped criticism for the way operations were conducted in other parts of the region either. We seem to have gone in with a definite pro-Serb perspective.

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