German parliamentarian Charlotte Antonia Neuhäuser of the Die Linke party in the German Bundestag has vowed that the fight for restorative justice for descendants of victims of the 1904/08 genocide will reach its logical conclusion and get a respectable outcome.
Neuhäuser’s Die Linke party last week introduced a parliamentary motion in the German Bundestag demanding the full legal recognition and full reparations for the German colonial genocide of the Ovaherero and Nama peoples in modern-day Namibia.
The motion specifically rejects standard bilateral development aid packages as a substitute for true restorative justice and reparations.
It instead demands direct financial reparations to the actual descendants of the victims.
Beyond recognition and financial redress, the motion calls for the immediate repatriation of looted cultural artefacts and ancestral remains taken by imperial Germany during the colonial period. Die Linke’s motion also strongly opposes the existing joint declarations between the German and Namibian governments, including the proposed €1.1 billion package offered by Germany to the Namibian government.
The party argues that the descendants of the victims have been systematically excluded from those state-to-state negotiations.
The motion was drafted in close collaboration with the targeted communities both in Namibia and within the diaspora.
Speaking to the media and directly to members of the two communities in Windhoek on Monday, Neuhäuser said her party has been working directly with the two affected communities to find recourse and with their fight now in the chambers of the Bundestag, a logical conclusion and a respectable outcome is the only path forward for both governments.
“We demand recognition of the crimes committed against the Ovaherero and Nama peoples between 1904 and 1908 as genocide, accompanied by a sincere apology and genuine reparations. Not as development aid, but as direct legal and material redress to the descendants of the Ovaherero and Nama, and to the Namibian government,” said Neuhäuser.
An estimated 80 000 Ovaherero and 10 000 Nama died in the genocide perpetrated by the German Empire between 1904 and 1908 in German South West Africa [now Namibia]. This systematic destruction wiped out roughly 80% of the Ovaherero population and 50% of the Nama population, making it widely recognised by historians as the first genocide of the 20th century. The mass casualties were the result of a deliberate policy of total annihilation ordered by German Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, who issued explicit written decrees stating that any Herero or Nama found within the German-claimed borders, armed or unarmed, including women and children, would be shot. The primary causes of death included starvation and thirst, as the German military poisoned water holes and guarded the desert border, leaving thousands to die of dehydration and starvation.
Survivors were rounded up and placed in forced labour camps, most notoriously on Shark Island near Lüderitz. Incarcerated individuals faced a mortality rate of roughly 50% due to systemic medical neglect, exposure, unhygienic conditions, rampant disease, and exhaustion from slave labour.
Prisoners were subjected to pseudo-scientific racial experiments. Female prisoners were routinely forced to use shards of glass to scrape the flesh from the severed heads of dead inmates so the skulls could be shipped to universities and museums in Germany for craniometric research. -ohembapu@nepc.com.na
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