Germany sued in US for massacring over 100K people in Namibia in early 1900s

In the US, descendants of Namibia’s Herero and Nama tribes have reportedly filed a compensation lawsuit against Berlin over the tens of thousands of people slaughtered by German troops in the African state early last century.


The legal complaint was filed Thursday with the US District Court in New York over an “incalculable damages” that were caused, Reuters reports. The plaintiffs claim that even if any reparation will be paid to Namibia, there’s no guarantee of any compensation to the victims.

“There is no assurance that any of the proposed foreign aid by Germany will actually reach or assist the minority indigenous communities that were directly harmed,” the descendants’ lawyer Ken McCallion wrote in an email as quoted by Reuters. The exact amount of proposed financial compensation for the plaintiffs has not been published by the news agency.

Over 100,000 Herero and Hama are estimated to have been killed between 1904 and 1908 during the uprising against German colonial rule in South-West Africa as the territory was called at the time. The unrest was started by the Herero who were joined by the Hama tribe a year later. The rebellion was viciously suppressed by German troops. After facing massive resistance from both tribes, German commander Lothar von Trotha called on his soldiers “to shoot every Herero with or without weapon within the German [colonial] borders.”

Those who survived, were later placed into the concentration camps, viewed by some historians as a prototype for the similar facilities to exterminate the Jewish population by the Nazi Germany during the Word War Two. Many of the prisoners there died of dehydration and starvation......https://on.rt.com/7zmu
 rt.com
6/1/17
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