Germany's Genocide in Namibia (Read Description)

The German empire unleashed a campaign of killing and torture after the Herero, Nama, Damara and San tribes rejected colonial rule in 1904. An estimated 80% of all the Herero people and 50% of Nama were killed.
Incensed by German settlers stealing their land, women and cattle, the tribes revolted in 1904. Determined to crush the rebellion, General Lothar von Trotha signed an “extermination order” that would lead to what historians call the first genocide of the 20th century, soldiers of German Kaiser Wilhelm slaughtered an estimated 100,000 people.
Dozens were beheaded after their deaths, their skulls sent to researchers in #Germany for discredited “scientific” experiments that purported to prove the racial superiority of white Europeans.
In some instances, captured Herero women were made to boil the decapitated heads and scrape them clean with shards of glass.
Research carried out by German professor Eugen Fischer on the skulls and bones resulted in theories later used by the Nazis to justify the murder of Jews.
Many of those skulls were displayed in German museums and institutions until recently. In 2018, 100 skulls and human remains were returned to Namibia.
The German government still refuse to pay direct reparations to the tribes, arguing instead that German development aid worth hundreds of millions of euros since 1990 was “for the benefit of all Namibians."
Today, about 30,000 #Namibians of German descent (around 2% of the country's overall population) live peacefully in Namibia. They hold most of the wealth including nearly 70% of the country’s commercial farmland.
📺 Recently president of #Namibia, Hage Geingob, was much less diplomatic with Norbert Lammert, the former president of the #German parliament. The latter was expressing concerns that there are more Chinese living and working in #Namibia than German expatriates.
Visibly angered, Geingob said those #Germans were mostly retirees and tourists, while the Chinese were mostly young professionals and engineers working on significant projects for the local economy. “What’s your problem with that?” he asked. “Why does it become your problem, heh! It looks like it’s more a European problem than our problem.
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#africa #colonialism #africanaustralian