Germany will pay Namibia €1.1bn for the colonial crimes it officially recognises as Genocide.
Gatekeepers News reports that Germany said it is ready to pay €1.1bn ($1.34 billion) as an atonement for the colonial crime committed by its troops against the Herero and Nama people.
German troops between 1904 and 1908, tortured and killed tens of thousands of men, women and children after the Herero and Nama tribes rebelled against colonial rule in what was named German South-West Africa and is now Namibia.
About 65,000 of roughly 80,000 Herero people living in the area at the time, and at least 10,000 of the roughly 20,000 Nama people, were killed.
On Friday, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas admitted that Germany had caused “immeasurable suffering” to the Herero and Nama people.
Gatekeepers News reports that this is the first time Berlin has recognized the atrocities committed, with the declaration coming after five years of negotiations with representatives Herero and Nama communities.
Maas said as a “gesture of recognition of the immeasurable suffering” Germany caused, it would set up a fund amounting to €1.1 billion ($1.34 billion).
The aim of the negotiations that lasted more than half a decade was “to find a common path to genuine reconciliation in memory of the victims,” Maas explained.
The Foreign Ministry said the affected communities would play a key role in deciding what the funds would be used for, noting that legal compensation claims would not be deducted from it.
“We will now, also in an official capacity, call these events what they were from today’s perspective — a genocide,” Maas said.
“The acceptance on the part of Germany that a genocide was committed is the first step in the right direction,” Namibian President Hage Geingob’s spokesman Alfredo Hengari said.
“It is the basis for the second step, which is an apology, to be followed by reparations,” he added.
