Genocide

Comment: An open account in Namibia

For the first time, the Federal government has referred to the mass killings of Herero and Namas more than 100 years ago officially as a genocide. What is still missing, the official apology, Claus Stäcker says.

2011 skulls of Herero and Nama from the collection of the Berlin Charité in Namibia were returned

Genocide is genocide is genocide. Or? In the case of the Armenians, the German parliamentarians were significantly lighter with the term. The majority was large, the condemnation of the Ottoman Empire of the unanimous. It went only to Turkey and their national founding myth. According to indignant their President Erdogan back wedged: Germany was “the last country”, the right is entitled, to judge a genocide of the Turkey. It should only drop once an account of the destruction of more than 100,000 Herero in southwest Africa, snorted Erdogan.

Unfortunately, Erdogan is right. That of Germany, to date, no unequivocal explanation was “a bit embarrassing”, and also acknowledged the Bundestag President Nobert Lammert. The course is completed the turn for a long time. The decades long argument that the offence of genocide, attack only with the entry into force of the UN Convention from 1951, was removed from the government’s rhetoric.

Encoded Forgiveness Please

Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul (SPD) spoke in 2004 at a memorial event at the Waterberg in front of thousands of troubled Hereros and Namas of a genocide “, according to current understanding”. Even an apology brought to you on behalf of the Federal government, albeit still cryptic: she asked the descendants of forgiveness; forgiveness in the sense of the Christian our father. At that time the still in a lot of Trouble with the green brought her foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, who feared that their Comments could be “compensation is relevant”.

Claus Stäcker, directs the Africa programs of the DW

The times have changed. Earning 2012, the opposition politician Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) is still largely ineffective as a resolution in the Bundestag, today, under the Federal foreign Minister Steinmeier, as its official guideline of the German-Namibian relations: “The war of extermination in Namibia from 1904 to 1908 was a war crime and genocide”. This set is government policy and is also the basis for the ongoing reconciliation and compensation discussions with Namibia. Only a few days ago, the special envoy Ruprecht Polenz, and the Africa representative of the foreign office, Georg Schmidt sat together in Windhoek, the Namibians.

Both are level-headed and experienced politician, neither revisionists nor a Hardliner. You are to come to an agreement on the height of the eyes, which is not focused in the past, but in the future. A basic posture, the parts of the Namibians.

Apology before the Federal election

The negotiations are still to come this year. At the latest, 2017 and prior to the Bundestag election to Federal government, then the and the Bundestag on the genocide question speak with an official apology to the descendants of the killed Herero and Nama have been waiting for so long in vain.

It is up to the historians reserved, whether the Ottoman genocide of the Armenians or of the German extermination campaign in South West Africa with the inglorious label as “the first genocide of the 20th century. Century” will go down in the annals. Not all sources in Namibia are clean processed. So a fierce taught raging dispute about how many people were actually killed, with what objectives and methods and which of the military-political order. It could also have been much less than 100,000 victims. The Emperors were, however, protection forces to poorly equipped and poorly motivated for a African Holocaust. And the great General of the mighty German Emperor could have acted as the author of the destruction of command, General Lothar von Trotha described himself, quite without genocide mandate by the Emperor and the Chancellor.

Complex Compensation Issues

But this is a historian and a source of dispute, not the Victims and rarely the oral Tradition of the Hereros and Namas. The crimes against the population have been well documented and until today has not atoned for. The statements of all previous Federal governments to make the past, with more generous development aid to all of today’s Namibians forget, is not risen. The Ducking and Abdel at lower levels yaw, embarrassing and unworthy – 2011 at the latest during the highly emotional Delivery of Herero skulls from former German racial research institutes was the game of the political defensive tactics unworthy of grief.

This is now hopefully, even if no line can be drawn. The question of who should be compensated, is now on the Agenda, but with all the good will be complicated. Unlike the Victims of the Holocaust after 1945 there are no more Survivors. The multi-ethnic state, Namibia wants to rekindle with individual reparations, no ethnic envy debates. Herero activists complain, however, find little hearing and threaten them with a lawsuit before the Hague court of arbitration. It’s bubbling and so on. Even if the interview climate in Windhoek, confirm the German and Namibian participants, a constructive and not hostile. But the account is open. And an apology to Germany must be on the table. Officially, dignified and credible. The faster the better.

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