Namibian President Hage Geingob has rejected Germany’s offer of compensation for colonial-era killings, calling it “not acceptable.”
“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.
Namibia was colonized and occupied by the German Empire in the 19th century. The two countries have been trying to reach a reparations agreement since 2015.
As part of the deal, Germany is to give an official apology and development aid as compensation for the slaughter of up to 100,000 indigenous Herero and Nama people by the German Reich in 1904-1908 following the Herero revolt.
Germany continues to provide development aid to Namibia. In 2004, the country served up its first apology.
“We Germans accept our historic and moral responsibility and the guilt incurred by Germans at that time,” said development aid minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul during a ceremony to mark the 100th anniversary of the Hereros’ 1904-1907 uprising. “The atrocities committed at that time would have been termed genocide,” she said, according to Associated Press.
In August 2018, Germany handed back the human remains of indigenous people killed during a genocide in colonial Namibia more than 100 years ago. The Namibian government accepted 19 skulls in total. They also received five full skeletons and even some bone and skin fragments at a Berlin church service.
The remains were being held onto by German universities and hospitals who used them in a series of early-20th-century scientific experiments designed to establish white people’s assumed racial superiority.
