09.06.2021

​Germany Officially Recognizes It Committed Genocide In Present-Day Namibia

Germany has admitted for the first time that it committed genocide in Namibia by killing an estimated 100,000 people, belonging to two ethnic groups more than a century ago. From about 1884 to 1915, Germany occupied several territories in Africa. Its colony in German South West Africa, in what is now Namibia. After settlers seized their land and cattle, ethnic Herero and Nama people launched a rebellion against their occupiers. German soldiers killed tens of thousands of them between 1904 and 1908. Survivors were forced into the desert and later placed in concentration camps where they were exploited for labor. Many died of disease and starvation, some after being used for medical experiments. It's estimated that 80% of the Indigenous populations of the Herero and Nama died during the genocide. Historians say German Gen. Lothar von Trotha, who was sent to what was then German South West Africa to put down an uprising by the Herero people, instructed his troops to wipe out the entire tribe. They say that the majority of Herero, about 75,000, were killed as were at least 25,000 Nama. In 2018, Germany returned more than a dozen skulls and other human remains taken from Namibia by colonial forces over a century earlier for pseudo-scientific racial experiments. They had been stored in German hospitals, museums and universities for decades. Credit: Brut.