The genocide in what is now Namibia lasted from 1904 to 1908
Dubbed “Germany’s forgotten genocide”, and described by historians as the first genocide of the 20th Century, the systematic murder of more than 70,000 Africans is being marked with a national day of remembrance for the first time in Namibia.
Almost 40 years before their use in the Holocaust, concentration camps and pseudoscientific experiments were used by German officials to torture and kill people in what was then called South West Africa.
The victims, primarily from the Ovaherero and Nama communities, were targeted because they refused to let the colonisers take their land and cattle.
Genocide Remembrance Day in Namibia on Wednesday follows years of pressure on Germany to pay reparations. Read more…