“Even if they gave a million, it wouldn’t mean anything”
They cannot “wash” their hands of this responsibility no matter how much they give. With these words, Aisa Omerovic from Srebrenica commented on the ten thousand euro compensation she received from the Netherlands for her brother who was killed in the genocide in July 1995.
“Even if they gave a million, I don’t care, I would love to have him alive. It’s not at all dignified what they gave. They just want to trick us and be able to say: ‘What do you want, you’ve been paid,'” points out Aisa.
“I am ashamed to say that I accepted the compensation”
Aisa from Srebrenica believes that the families of all the victims, about 8.000 of them, from the zone that was under United Nations (UN) protection at the time of the genocide, deserve compensation.
“Everyone died and it should have been given to everyone, because I’m ashamed to tell someone that I got it, and he didn’t,” points out Aisa.
She states that money cannot be a satisfaction for families for the trauma they experienced and that she was in a dilemma about whether to accept compensation at all.
In 2019, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands ruled that the Netherlands had “very limited” responsibility for the genocide, i.e. for the death of 350 people.
The court ruled that Dutch peacekeepers evacuated the men from their military base even though they knew they were “at risk of being abused and killed”.
What do they say in the compensation commission?
The Netherlands Compensation Commission Potocari (NCCP), whose task is to check who is entitled to compensation, started receiving requests from the victims’ families in June 2021.
As of June 15th of this year, the Commission is not accepting new requests but will continue to consider the old ones and complete their work.
The spokesman of the Commission, Frank Neervoort, says that almost 8.000 people have submitted a request for compensation to date, and these are the relatives of more than 2.690 victims of the genocide.
He explained that the compensation is intended for the relatives of a limited group of victims, that is, those who were at the UN military base in Potocari on July 13th, 1995 in the afternoon.
“The commission did everything to reach the closest relatives of this group of victims. After 28 years, it is not easy to determine who meets the requirements, that is, who was on the ground of the military base itself. The burden is great and requires a very careful approach,” Neervoort points out, Radio Slobodna Evropa reports.
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