Germany is to recognise as genocide the massacre of 110,000 of the Herero and Nama people of Namibia by German troops between 1904 and 1908 in a landmark admission of historical guilt.
A spokesman for Angela Merkel’s government said Germany would formally apologise to Namibia.
The systematic extermination of up to 100,000 Herero and some 10,000 of the Nama people by German colonial troops is widely regarded as the first genocide of the 20th century, and a precursor to the Holocaust. [...]
Foreign ministry guidelines started referring to the killings as a “genocide” a year ago, but only this week has the government confirmed in a written answer to a parliamentary question that this is now official policy.
“The federal government has been pursuing a dialogue with Namibia on this very painful history of the colonial era since 2012,” Sawsan Chebli, a spokesman for the German foreign ministry, said on Wednesday. [...]
In remarks that now seem chillingly to prefigure the Holocasut. General Lotha von Trotha, the commander of German forces, wrote in 1904 of his policy towards the Herero: “I believe that the nation as such should be annihilated, or, if this is not possible by tactical measures, expelled from the country”.
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