Germany moves to atone for 'forgotten genocide' in Namibia

[inanna]

Source: The Guardian

Sunday 25 December 2016 06.00 GMT

It has become known as the first genocide of the 20th century: tens of thousands of men, women and children shot, starved, and tortured to death by German troops as they put down rebellious tribes in what is now Namibia. For more than a century the atrocities have been largely forgotten in Europe, and often in much of Africa too.

Now a series of events – and a policy U-turn by Berlin – is raising the international profile of the massacre of Herero and Namaqua peoples and bringing justice for their descendants a little closer. Negotiations between the German and Namibian governments over possible reparation payments are expected to be completed and result in an official apology before next June.

In Berlin a major new exhibition about the country’s bloody colonial history opened earlier this winter. It features letters from missionaries expressing their concerns about concentration camps and killings in Germany’s south-west African colony.

<snip>

In 1884, as European powers scrambled to carve up Africa, Berlin moved to annex a new colony on the south-west coast of the continent. Land was confiscated, livestock plundered and native people subjected to racially motivated violence, rape and murder. In January 1904, the Herero people – also called the Ovaherero – rebelled. More than a hundred German civilians were killed. The smaller Nama tribe joined the uprising the following year.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/25/germany-moves-to-atone-for-forgotten-genocide-in-namibia

[McCamy Taylor]

1. Don't forget King Leopold in the Belgian Congo and the British Killings in South Africa.

And the many Armenian genocides committed by Turkey. And, of course, the rape and plunder of the American West. The second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century were all about genocides. Don't let Germany take all the credit.

[Feeling the Bern]

2. Japanese treatment of the Koreans after the 1898 war

American treatment of the Filipinos after the 1898 war
American destruction of the native Hawai'ians
Japanese pillaging of the native Formosans

Indonesian butchering of the Timorans
Russian starving of Ukraine
Japanese raping Nanking
French destruction of their African colonies

Oh, and that slave trade the Spanish pretty much controlled for decades, if not centuries, from Africa to "the New World."

Aren't we just so good to each other?

[tenorly]

3. And Apartheid South Africa's 'Black Bomb'

A.k.a. AIDS