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German Govt At Genocide Commemoration

New Era (Windhoek)
NEWS
August 9, 2004
Posted to the web August 9, 2004

By Uapi Ngava
Windhoek
THE German ambassador to Namibia, Dr Wolfgang Massing, will this morning
address a media conference at his embassy's premises in the capital on the
issue of the Herero genocide committed by the German Imperial forces nearly a
century ago.
More than alluding to the vexed issue - the genocide and the subsequent demand
for reparations by the offspring of the victims - Ambassador Wolfgang will
announce the arrival of his cabinet minister in the country who will
incidentally attend the 100th commemoration of the atrocities this week,
reliable political sources have it.
Minister for Economic and Technical Co-operation, Heidi Wieczorek-Zeul, will
arrive in Namibia this week after connecting with a direct flight of the German
airliner Lufthansa from Bonn to Johannesburg, South Africa, before arriving in
Windhoek on Thursday, reliable aviation sources have said.
Specifically, she will be accompanying her ambassador, Dr Wolfgang Massing, to
the site of the commemoration, expected to be attended by thousands over the
coming weekend.
Her visit is being pre-empted by agents of the German external secret service
who have arrived in the country over the weekend - the Bundesnachrich-
tendienst.
The oddity, though, this time round will be the presence of a German government
minister at a solemn Ohamakari event where a war memorial outside the town of
Okakarara in the Otjozondjupa Region has been established.
Until recent times, Germany has flatly refused the reality of a genocide on the
Herero people during the 1904 - 1907 War of Extermination (Das
Vernitigungsbevel) under General Lothar von Trotha, and has insisted it will
not pay reparations to the surviving victims, despite litigation in USA courts
by Herero leaders
At the end of that war, an estimated three quarters of the Herero were
decimated, according to the Blue Book, a British authoritative record on German
barbarism in the then German South West Africa (Deutsche Südwest Afrika) - the
name Namibia was known by during German colonial rule.
But not all is doomed for the case of reparations. At a public debate issue
last week, Massing revisited the case for possible reparations and dangled a
carrot of hope for the victims when he said: " We want to move for- ward. This
year is the first time that Germany recognises and sends a high ranking
official to this commemoration. This is a positive step."

   

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