Patrice Riemens on Fri, 30 Jul 2004 07:50:40 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> Ongoing Dutch Srebrenica Blues ... |
Re: The last Ivogram about the misadventures of Mohamed Sacirbey... There was a quite extraordinary sequence of two evening programmes about the never ending Sebrenica affair on the Dutch public TV channel NOS/Nova yesterday and the day before yesterday. The full article (in Dutch) is at: http://www.nos.nl/nieuws/artikelen/2004/7/27/sacirbeysrebrenicawerdverraden.html The day before yesterday (I did not see that one), M.Sacirbey, just released on bail, and systematically refered to as "Mr Shakkerbee" (should be "Saadjeerbei"), told the interviewer that the Srebrenica enclave basically not only had been given up by the International forces, but was actually betrayed and its erasure made part of a deal between Bildt (European negotiator) and Holbrooke (the U.S. one) with the Serbians. Getting rid of the enclaves would 'ease up' the peace process and simplify its 'geography'. According to Sacirbey, the Dutch government (whose troops were 'protecting' Srebrenica) was kept in the dark about the deal. The subsequent massacre of 8000 Muslim men was of course not scripted beforehand (?) and an extremely bad 'surprise' to the parties concerned ... But the next day got really interesting (I saw that one) when Joris Voorhoeve (who was the Dutch defense minister then, and thus responsible for the troops) was asked to react on Sacirbey's assertions. He denied them en bloc, while admitting separately to each and everyone of them! The problem, he said, was that Sacirbey was 'vastly exagerating', and was 'deeply frustrated by the outcome' (and 'understandably so'). Asked to clarify the difference between his on the whole take and these separate admissions, Voorhoeve could only reply that Sacirbey could not ('ever') prove what he was asserting. He added that Srebrenica was the most horrendous human rights crime in Europe since WWII. And that he personally could not sleep for years because of it. (He looked quite healthy though, thanks God) In the end the fall of Srebrenica caused the fall of the Dutch government, though it is not clear if other causes were involved (the coalition was tired, and there were elections coming up anyway). There have also been countless commissions of enquiry, including a parliamentary one. None got very far in getting the whole picture. Mohamed Sacirbey is also a tricky subject by himself in the Netherlands, since he had a relationship with Mabel Wisse Smit, who is now married with Queen Beatrix's second son (the current PM had the couple conveniently demoted from Royal Family status ...) # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net