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Source: Reuters
Dutch government officials reacted angrily to claims by a
retired US general that Dutch forces were overrun in Srebrenica in
1995 in part because of the presence of gay soldiers.
At a US congressional hearing on Thursday on allowing gay soldiers
to serve openly in the military, former Supreme Allied Commander
John Sheehan said there was a link between having homosexuals in
the Dutch forces and the massacre at Srebrenica.
Bosnian Serb forces overran lightly armed Dutch soldiers in the
United Nations-designated enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995 and
subsequently massacred more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys.
Reports on the hearing said Sheehan blamed a post-Cold War effort
by European nations to socialise their forces by, among other
things, letting gays serve.
"That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war. The case
in point that I'm referring to is when the Dutch were required to
defend Srebrenica against the Serbs," Sheehan said.
"The battalion was under-strength, poorly led, and the Serbs came
into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone poles, marched
the Muslims off, and executed them."
Carl Levin, chairman of the US Senate's Armed Services Committee,
asked: "Did the Dutch leaders tell you it was because there were
gay soldiers there?"
"Yes, they did. They included that as part of the problem," Sheehan
said, according to a webcast on the website of the Senate Armed
Services Committee.
"That there were gay soldiers?" Levin then asked.
"That the combination was the liberalisation of the military, a net
effect was basically social engineering."
The Dutch Defence Ministry issued a statement calling Sheehan's
claims absolute nonsense and adding that gay Dutch soldiers
routinely cooperate with the US military in the NATO mission in
Afghanistan.
Renee Jones-Bos, the Dutch ambassador to the United States, said in
a statement, "I couldn't disagree more" with Sheehan, adding there
was no evidence of his claims in the extensive record of research
on Srebrenica.
Dutch press agency ANP quoted the head of the military union AFMP,
Wim van den Burg, as saying Sheehan's comments were ridiculous and
out of the realm of fiction.
The events in Srebrenica remain a sensitive subject in the
Netherlands, where a six-year investigation into the massacre led
to the government's fall in 2002.
