Namibia to score the German colonial genocide for the first time with Memory Day

Entitled “The Forgotten Genocide of Germany” and described by historians as the first genocide of the 20th century, the systematic murder of more than 70,000 Africans was marked by a national day of commemoration for the first time in Namibia.

Almost 40 years before their use in the Holocaust, concentration camps and pseudoscientific experiments were used by German officials to torment and kill people in the then called Southwestern Africa.

The victims, mainly from Obaherero and Nama communities, were directed because they refused to let the colonizers take their land and livestock.

The Genocide Memory Day in Namibia on Wednesday follows years of pressure on Germany to pay reparations.

The new national holiday will be celebrated every year as part of Namibia’s “Journey of Healing, including a minute of silence and a vigil of candles outside the Windhoek parliament, according to the government.

It says she chose the date on May 28, since on this day in 1907, German officials announce the closure of concentration camps after international criticism.

Control of Southwestern Africa – along with the current Cameroon, Togo and other colonial territories – was devoid of Germany, competing with the authorities after World War I.

For many years, Germany has not publicly recognized the mass slaughter, which took place between 1904 and 1908.

But four years ago, he officially acknowledged that the German colonizers had carried out the genocide and offered EUR 1.1 billion (940 million British pounds; $ 1.34 billion) in aid to pay for over 30 years – without mentioning “reparations” or “benefit” in the legal formulation.

Namibia refused this offer by calling it a “first step in the right direction”, which nevertheless failed to include the official apology and the “reparations” he was looking for.

Many Namibians were not impressed with what they saw.

“It was the joke of the century” Uahimisa Kaapehi told BBC at that timeS “We want our land. Money is nothing.”

He is an ethnic descendant of Ovaherero and a city advisor in Swacopmund, where many of the atrocities have happened, and said that “our wealth, farms, livestock” has been taken. “

A group presenting the families of the victims of genocide also erupted for the deal offered in 2021, calling IT proof of “racist thinking by Germany and neo -colonial submission by Namibia” in a joint statement.

Since A deal has been reached between the two nations This would include an official apology given by Germany and which It is reported to increase the total amount by an additional EUR 50 millionS

But many Obaherero campaigns and Nagi say the deal is an insult to the memory of their ancestors and that they were unfairly excluded from the negotiating table. The news of a national day of commemoration were greeted with cynicism by some, with Public activists who say that restorative justice is still far awayS

Many campaigns would like to see the German government to buy the lands of the ancestors now in the hands of the German -speaking community and to return them to the descendants of Owaherero and Nam.

Historians indicate that Germany’s irony has so far refused to pay reparations because before the genocide, Germany itself extracted its own so -called reparations from the people of Obaherero and Nami who had fought against the colonizers.

This was paid in the form of livestock and amounts to 12,000 cows – which is calculated by the German -American historian Thomas Craimer to be somewhere between $ 1.2 million and $ 8.8 million in today’s money and which he claims to be added to the repayment account.

These colonial robberies and battles were followed by the genocide, which began in 1904 with an order for destruction by a German employee named Lothar von Trot.

“This order of extermination shows that they will no longer take prisoners – women, men, someone with or without livestock – they would be executed” Namibian history Martha was death spoken on the national broadcast of NBCS

This was followed by the introduction of concentration camps, she added.

“People worked to death, many people died in concentration camps for exhaustion. In fact, there were pre -printed evidence of death (saying)” death of exhaustion “waiting for these people to die because they knew they would die.”

The remains of some of the killed have been sent to Germany for now discredited studies to prove the racial superiority of white Europeans. Many of the bones have already been repatriated.

Last year, Namibia criticized Germany after proposing to come to Israel’s defense to stop responding to a Genocide crime case in Gaza in the best UN court.

“The German government is just going to buy the genocide that it performed on the Namibian soil,” said then President Hage Gaining.

Additional reporting by Samantha Granville