Posted on 01/30/2003 5:40:53 PM PST by MadIvan
A Namibian tribe that came close to being exterminated by Germany's colonial forces nearly a century ago is suing the German government and two companies for £2.6 billion.
The Herero People's Reparation Corporation, based in Washington, claims that the Deutsche Bank and a shipping company, the Woermann Line, now known as SAFmarine, assisted the Berlin government "to relentlessly pursue the enslavement and genocidal destruction" of the Herero people between 1904 and 1907.
Germany had colonised the territory of South West Africa, a parched, sprawling land made up largely of two deserts and rocks, in 1884, encouraging white settlers to farm the hinterland. The colonial authority was taken by surprise when the Herero tribespeople rose in revolt against the seizure of their land.
After white settlers were attacked and killed, Kaiser Wilhelm sent an army under Gen Lothar von Trotha to suppress the rebellion. Von Trotha, a man with a reputation for ruthless efficiency, issued an order demanding that "every Herero, whether found armed or unarmed, with or without cattle, will be shot".
In the following three years, German forces slaughtered 65,000 Herero men, women and children, sending remnants of the tribe into the depths of the Kalahari desert.
Supporters of the Herero people claim that Von Trotha's attempted extermination of the Herero people set the pattern for the Holocaust in Nazi Germany 40 years later.
The Herero massacre has weighed heavily on the conscience of latter-day German governments.
Despite the fact that Germany was forced by Allied troops to cede the territory in 1915, leaving it eventually under the rule of apartheid South Africa until its independence as Namibia in 1990, Germany has remained the largest single investor in the country and provides billions in financial, technical and medical assistance to the government.
When Roman Herzog, then German president, visited the country in 1998 he pledged that Germany would "live up to its historical responsibility" towards Namibia, but said the Hereros had no case for compensation because international laws on the protection of the civilian population did not exist at the time of the conflict.
Many of the enormous ranches and farms in Nambia today are owned by German-speaking descendants of early settlers or German expatriates.
President Sam Nujoma, Africa's strongest supporter of President Robert Mugabe's "land reform programme" in Zimbabwe, has threatened to follow a similar programme of land seizure.
There are no more than 100,000 Hereros and related tribespeople left, scattered throughout south-western Africa, but human rights activists and lawyers have taken up their case and helped to form the Herero People's Reparation Corporation, that is now launching the lawsuit against the German government and, in a separate case, against the two companies.
Herero paramount chief Kuaima Riruako said he expected the cases to be heard at American courts within two months. He and his lawyers have evoked comparisons with Nazi Germany in papers filed with the courts.
When all the Nations get the same share of recognition...Germans paid Jews, so why not the HERERO
I am one of the survivor...as for the Germans, the DEUTSCHE BANK...
Keep wondering
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