The Srebrenica massacre as Dutch national trauma: Discourse analysis of selected daily newspapers

Although more than 23 years have passed since the event known as the Srebrenica massacre, it is still a live topic in Dutch society. The Dutch troops who served on a UN peace mission in Srebrenica have been blamed for not being able to prevent the death of such a large number of innocent people. Moreover, the survivors of the killed Bosnian Muslims are still suing the Netherlands over compensations. The aim of the thesis is to find out who was blamed for the Srebrenica massacre by the Dutch society - the soldiers who served the mission, their commanders, the Netherlands, the international community or other sides involved. To reach the aim, discourse analysis was applied on articles published over a period of ten years in two influential Dutch newspapers - De Volkskrant and NRC Handelsblad. The time period from June 2007 to June 2017 was selected for the analysis as a number of key court cases took place during this particular period. The cases had a major influence on the development of the discourse of blame, which is studied in the thesis in detail. Apart from the analytical part, the thesis also includes a contextual part where historical events leading to the Srebrenica massacre are dealt with as well as the role of the Dutch peacekeepers