Bosnia has protested over the presentation of a military award to members of the Dutch battalion responsible for security in Srebrenica in 1995 when more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred by Serb forces.

Karel Vosskuler, the Dutch Ambassador to Sarajevo, was summoned to the Bosnian presidency on Monday and handed a protest note amid rising anger among survivors and relatives of those who died in Europe’s worst massacre since the Second World War.

Zumra Sehomerovic, who lost her husband in the massacre, expressed astonishment at the awards. “My memories are still alive, memories of the hope and trust we had in Dutch soldiers,” she said. “Instead of the ‘monument of shame’, we see rewards in Holland for the soldiers serving the UN troops in Srebrenica.”

Her anger was directed at Henk Kamp, the Dutch Defence Minister, who presented the insignia to some members of the 850-strong battalion on Monday at a military base in the northern city of Assen.

“All of you receive today a special insignia as a visible acknowledgement . . . that in Srebrenica you had an extraordinarily difficult task,” Mr Kamp said. “And also to acknowledge the fact that Dutchbat has for years wrongly been held responsible for what happened in the enclave,” he said. “This black page in the postwar history of Europe will always be connected with the mission of Dutchbat III.”

Thom Karremans, the former Dutchbat commander, was the first to receive his award. At the time of the massacre he was filmed at Srebrenica being cowed by Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian-Serb general. There were also photographed sharing a drink.

“My thoughts go out to the thousands of human lives that were unnecessarily lost in Bosnia, and to the survivors of a torn land, but also to the unnecessary loss of our own men,” Mr Karremans said.

General Mladic, who has been on the run for more than a decade, is charged with genocide for masterminding the massacre. His forces overran the so-called UN safe haven of Srebrenica, where the lightly armed Dutch troops offered no resistance. Serb forces separated men and boys from the rest of the population. They were driven away and killed. Last month forensic science teams found another mass grave containing more than 100 victims.

But the award ceremony reignited the debate. “This is a scandalous, shameful and humiliating decision,” Munira Subasic, the head of the Srebrenica Women association, said.

An independent report into the killings in 2002 largely cleared the Dutch forces of blame but did accuse the Dutch Government of sending troops into an impossible situation. The Dutch were lightly armed and when they requested air support from the French general in charge of UN forces, none came. After the report’s publication, Wim Kok, then the Prime Minister, and his Government resigned.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, who was the International High Representative in Bosnia until January said that while he understood the angry response from Bosnians to the award, he thought it was misguided.

“All Nato troops who served in Bosnia were awarded a campaign medal,” he said. “The people really to blame for this massacre were not the poor bloody infantry on the ground nor the UN, but the leaders of the Western world who decided not to protect the safe havens,” he said.

Unsafe zone

July 1995 8,000 Muslim men and boys are massacred in Srebrenica “safe zone” under Dutch protection

July 1995 Serbian commander Ratko Mladic is indicted by the United Nations’s International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

April 2002 Report blames the Dutch Government and senior military officials for not stopping the massacre. Entire Dutch Cabinet resigns

April 2004 Appeals court at The Hague rules that the massacre was genocide — the first legally established case of genocide in Europe since Second World War Source: Times archive and UN

Times Recommends

• It’s only Brits who don’t appreciate me, says Blair
• Party’s over for Greek graspers
• White House tightens security for Xmas marathon