A delegation of Namibian government representatives and leaders of the indigenous Herero and Nama people who came to Germany to repatriate 20 skulls of their ancestors were once again disappointed in their hopes for dialogue and an official apology.
The skulls were of victims of the mass murder of 80,000 Herero and Nama between 1904 and 1908, which were stolen by the former colonial ‘Kaiserreich’ for racial research some 100 years ago.
NAMIBIA: Skulls Repatriated – But No Official German Apology – IPS ipsnews.net
What? Didn’t you hear?! We live in a post racial, post colonial world! Surely apologies are not necessary!
Much more at the link (and it is a must read), with the history of genocide behind the indigenous skulls. And since this did not happen in some distant, forgettable past, but a mere 30 years before the raise of the Third Reich, I wonder why we do not see this so called “racial research” and mass murder of African peoples as inextricably tied to the racial cleansing that Nazis started only three decades later. But I guess Europe’s hand (almost all of Europe) in similar atrocities makes it easier not to look too deeply into this fairly recent colonial history.
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