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Ed Webb

Namibia: US Judge Dismisses Namibian Genocide Claims Against Germany - allAfrica.com - 0 views

allafrica.com/...201903080005.html

Germany Namibia colonialism genocide crimes rights history law

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • A US court has dismissed a compensation lawsuit lodged against Germany by two Namibian tribes for genocide and property seizures in colonial times. New York lawyers for Herero and Nama will appeal the ruling.
  • In the early 1900s, colonial troops killed tens of thousands of protesting Nama and Herero outright or expelled them to their deaths in the Omaheke desert region within what was then known as German South West Africa under an "extermination order" issued by colonial German General Lothar von Trotha.
  • Swain in her 23-page judgment dated Wednesday ruled that the principle of sovereign immunity made the case against Germany inadmissible.
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  • The ruling was predictable, said Germany's legal representative Ruprecht Polenz, a jurist, veteran Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician and former Bundestag foreign affairs committee chairman, who since 2015 has led negotiations with Namibia's government over the colonial past. .column.main div.ad-container.center-ad { width: auto; height: auto; } #div-gpt-async-ad-center-b-label { display: none; } "That's why we've always said that it's not a legal but a political-moral issue," Polenz told the German news agency dpa.
  • During World War One, then-imperial Germany lost colonial territories in what is now Namibia as well as in what are now Tanzania, Samoa and Papua New Guinea. In South West Africa -- held since 1884 -- German colonial troops surrendered to British forces in July 1915. At the time the colony had 14,000 European settlers of which 12,000 were German.
  • In early January, Hermann Parzinger, a leading German museum curator, said a memorial space for crimes committed by Germany in colonial times should be included in Berlin's new Humboldt Forum complex.
Ed Webb

Africa: How Seriously Is Germany Taking Its Colonial History? - allAfrica.com - 0 views

allafrica.com/...202104280820.html

Germany Africa Namibia Nigeria Tanzania colonialism history crimes politics

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • German colonial traces are plain to see everywhere for Naita Hishoono from Namibia. A walk through the country's capital, Windhoek, reveals German street names, German shops, an imposing church built during German colonial days. And under the surface lurks something more sinister and haunting: the genocide of Herero and Nama people by German colonial troops. It's a dark chapter every Namibian knows, but it's a topic that barely sees daylight in Germany.
  • in Germany, you would completely forget that Germany had colonies
  • It took more than 100 years for a German government to officially acknowledge the country's colonial actions in Africa. In 2018, the ruling coalition of the conservative CDU/CSU block and Social Democrat (SPD) parties agreed to take a fresh look the Germany's colonial past.
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  • Among other things, German museums came to an understanding on how they want to proceed with artifacts looted during the colonial times. And a central contact point has been established for former colonies to demand the return of their possessions.
  • Museums and archives have returned skeletons brought to Germany during the colonial period -- for dubious scientific experiments, among other things. Cities have begun renaming streets honoring colonialists
  • Since 2015, Germany and Namibia have been negotiating about an official apology for the genocide of the Herero and Nama people, with no results so far.
  • In February, Tanzania's ambassador to Germany, Abdallah Possi, demanded the German government start negotiating a deal for reparations with Tanzania. This would allow Berlin to show that "Germans have finally accepted responsibility for human rights abuses during the colonial era, and that they take what happened to Tanzanians in the past seriously," the ambassador told the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel. Possi was referring to the Maji Maji Rebellion, an uprising against German colonial forces from 1905 until 1907, which claimed around 250,000 victims.
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