Namibia sues Germany for "forgotten genocide"

 Representatives of two indigenous groups have filed a class action suit in New York against Germany seeking reparations for an alleged genocide of their peoples by German colonial rulers over a century ago in what is now Namibia.

  The suit filed by the Ovaherero and Nama people on Thursday in New York also demands that their representatives be included in negotiations between Germany and Namibia on the issue.

  The plaintiffs said they were bringing the class action suit "on behalf of all Ovaherero and Nama worldwide, seeking reparations and compensation for the genocide" suffered at the hands of the German colonial authorities.

  They said they were also seeking a declaration of their right "to be included in any negotiation between Germany and Namibia" and that no settlements can be reached unless they are among the signatories.

  The dispute harkens back to a period in the late 19th and early 20th century when South West Africa, now known as Namibia, was a German colony.

  The suit alleges that from 1885 to 1903 about a quarter of Ovaherero and Nama lands -- thousands of square miles -- was taken without compensation by German settlers with the explicit consent of German colonial authorities.

  It also claims that German colonial authorities turned a blind eye to rapes by colonists of Ovaherero and Nama women and girls, and the use of forced labour.

  Tensions boiled over in early 1904 when the Ovaherero rose up, followed by the Nama, in an insurrection crushed by German imperial troops.

  The suit alleges that as many 100,000 Ovaherero and Nama people died in a campaign of annihilation led by German General Lothar von Trotha.

  The plaintiffs include Vekuii Rukoro, identified as the paramount chief of the Ovaherero people, David Frederick, chief and chairman of the Nama Traditional Authorities Association, and the non-profit Association of the Ovaherero Genocide in the USA, Inc.

"Genocide doesn't have a statute of limitations"

On July 6, a delegation of Namibian leaders, lawyers, and heads of civic organisations, arrived in Berlin hoping to meet with German President Joachim Gauck, to present him with a petition signed by over 2,000 German public figures including members of the Bundestag, the German national parliament. The document, titled "Genocide is Genocide ", called on the German government to accept "historical responsibility" for the genocide perpetrated against the Herero and Nama people over a century ago.

In October 1904 General Lothar von Throtha, the commander in German "South-West Africa", issued an extermination order - to kill any Herero, armed or not, found within the borders of German colonial territory. As the Herero fled into the desert towards Botswana, the German authorities sealed off the border. Thousands died of thirst and starvation, the rest were sent to concentration camps. By 1909, 65,000 people had been killed, and an estimated 80 percent of the Herero people and 50 percent of the Nama had been wiped out.

In 2001, the Herero People's Reparations Corporation filed a civil lawsuit with a US court requesting $2bn in recompense from the German government and several corporations. The legal case was unsuccessful.

In 2004, at the hundred year anniversary of the Herero uprising, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany's development aid minister expressed regret for the mass killing. "We Germans accept our historic and moral responsibility and the guilt incurred by Germans at that time". But the minister dismissed calls for financial compensation for the victims' descendants. Many Namibian activists thought the minister's statement did not go far enough.

In 2011, the skulls of 20 victims of the genocide - for decades stored at the Berlin Medical Historical Museum - were handed over in an official ceremony to a Namibian delegation.

In 2015, a motion was submitted in the German parliament by the Left Party calling on Angela Merkel's government to apologise to Namibia, and repudiating the effort to use development assistance to deal with the historic trauma, calling it "a unilateral move, made without consulting the Namibians". The motion said development assistance is entirely different from "restorative justice", which requires that the injustice first be recognised.

When the Namibian leaders arrived in Berlin, they were planning to reiterate their demands for an apology, reparations, and for the repatriation of the remaining skulls to Namibia. Yet by the second week of July, reports emerged that the Namibian delegation was given the "cold shoulder", did not get to meet with President Gauck, and that the petition was handed to a lower-level bureaucrat in the president's office. The delegation was confined to a street entrance, and not invited to sit down to present the document. The Herero leader, Chief Vekuii Rukoro, who led the delegation, was displeased by the reception. He denounced the German government, saying:

 "The refusal of the German president to personally come and receive such a historic document at this critical juncture and the uncivilised manner in which his office decided to receive such a dignified and high ranking delegation ..." - adding that the behaviour showed the "punch of typical German arrogance and paternalism which we reject with the contempt they deserve".

On July 8, Norbert Lammert of the Christian Democrat party, and president of the Bundestag, wrote in Die Zeit, that Germany perpetrated a "race war" and a "genocide" in Namibia.

The Namibian delegation has now set October 2 as the deadline for an answer to their demands for reparations. The activists have since travelled to London where they met with a team of lawyers to ponder legal action against Germany, should it miss the upcoming deadline.

"The whole of Africa will be united behind the Ovaherero and Nama of Namibia, and Germany will be the new international exile state guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity," warned ChiefRukoro.

The Genocide Germany Forgot

"Every Herero on German territory, with or without rifles, with or without cattle, will be shot. I'm not taking in any more women and children, drive them back to their people or have them shot." - General Lothar von Trotha on October 2, 1904

Between 1884 and 1915, Germany was the colonial master in what is today Namibia. In 1904, the Herero launched a major uprising against their German colonial masters, killing more than 100 Germans. The uprising led Germany's von Trotha to order to decimation of the entire Herero population. Fortunately, he did not succeed, and today there are again 120,000 Herero and 60,000 Nama minorities in the country. The Herero people were massacred between 1904 and 1905. More than 70,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama, most of the tribal populations, were killed as an anti-colonial uprising was crushed. Christian Kopp from Berlin Postkolonial says the term genocide is appropriate "because there was a clear intent to wipe out the Herero and the Hama." Lothar von Trotha said at the time he would "wipe them out with rivers of blood."

Henning Melber, an expert on Namibia from the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Stockholm. "The point about Germany in South West Africa is that it waged a war quite openly that these days would classify as genocide. It is not as if genocide was practiced in secret. In imperial Germany, events in German South West Africa were considered important and the political elite boasted quite openly that they had wiped out the Herero and Nama." During the fight German soldiers are said to have forced the surviving Herero into the Omaheke desert and blocked access to all water sources. Thousands died a painful death from starvation and thirst.

Niema Movassat, deputy for the opposition Left Party in the German parliament, says hundreds of thousands were shot or hanged, or deprived of water and left to die of thirst in the desert. Or put into camps for forced labour. "One has to take responsibility for this," he told DW. At the end of February, the Left Party brought a motion before parliament calling for the murderous campaign in what was then German South West Africa to be declared as genocide. "There has never been an official apology," said Movassat.

It was only after Namibia became independent in 1990 that the full scope of the crime became public knowledge in the country itself. 100 years after its deadly campaign against the Herero people of Namibia, the then Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul visited the former colony on Saturday. She asked for the country's forgiveness. "We Germans recognize our historical, political, moral and ethical responsibility and guilt," the development minister said. Wieczorek-Zeul told several thousand Herero people who gathered at the site of the battle. "Blinded by colonial delusion," she said, Germans brought "violence, discrimination, racism and destruction" to the country. She said, the crimes that took place a hundred years ago would have been defined as genocide, and von Trotha would have been brought before a criminal tribunal.

http://www.dw.de/germany-asks-for-namibians-forgiveness/a-1298060

BBC Video - The German Genocide of the Hetero