Namibia declined an offer from the German government Thursday to pay reparations for a colonial-era genocide, calling it unacceptably low.
Germany offered €10 million ($11.7 million) in reparations for mass killings the German Empire committed at the beginning of the 20th century. Namibian President Hage Geingob rejected the offer, insisting his government’s special envoy, Zed Ngavirue, would negotiate for a “revised offer.”
“The current offer for reparations made by the German government remains an outstanding issue and is not acceptable to the Namibian government,” Geingob said in a statement after a briefing on the status of negotiations.
Geingob also took exception over Berlin’s refusal to use the term reparations, describing it instead as “healing the wounds” of the past.
“While the Namibian Government agreed to negotiate the issue of redress (reparations), which the German Government consistently referred to as ‘healing the wounds,’ Germany has declined to accept the term ‘reparations,'” he continued.
The two countries opened negotiations on an agreement over the issue in 2015. The Namibian government sought to convince Germany to officially apologize for the killing of tens of thousands of indigenous Herero and Nama people between 1904 and 1908 in response to an anti-colonial uprising.
Germany has repeatedly evaded the issue, refusing to issue an unreserved apology despite its admission that colonial authorities were responsible for the atrocities. Berlin is also reluctant to pay direct reparations, instead pointing to the tens of millions it has provided the country in development aid.
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, German colonial officials killed as many as 80,000 people.
The Museum noted:
Between 1904-1907, German military forces, called Schutztruppe, committed a genocide against indigenous people in their colony of German Southwest Africa (present-day Namibia; hereafter, GSWA). The intent of these killings—which occurred through battle; through starvation and thirst in the Omaheke Desert; and through forced labor, malnutrition, sexual violence, medical experiments and disease in concentration camps—was to rid the colony of people viewed as expendable and thus gain access to their land.
This genocide, the first of the twentieth century, was a prelude to the Holocaust in both the ideology of racial hierarchy that justified the genocide and in the methods employed. Such linkage between the two genocides has been termed the “continuity thesis.” Historians estimate that approximately 80,000 indigenous people were killed in the genocide. While these numbers are difficult to confirm, this figure represents about 80 percent of the Herero people and 50 percent of the Nama people.
Germany’s special envoy and chief negotiator, Ruprecht Polenz, did not deny that Namibia rejected the offer but insisted he was confident the two sides could reach a satisfactory agreement.
“What matters is that the negotiations are ongoing, and I am still optimistic that a solution can be found,” he said. “Germany wants to live up to its moral and political responsibility. For us, this is not a legal question but a political and moral question.”
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