Germany's $1.3bn Apology for Genocide of Namibian Diamond Tribes
June 14, 21
(IDEX Online) - Germany has, for the first time, apologized for the genocide in Namibia which claimed the lives of 75,000 tribes people - during which time it plundered untold reserves of the country's diamonds.
German foreign minister Heiko Maas (pictured) has pledged $1.3bn aid to Namibia for the mass killings between 1904 and 1908 in what was then German South West Africa.
Towards the end of that period the German army found vast reserves of rough diamonds in sand dunes of the Namib desert - which belonged to the Herero and Nama tribes.
They slaughtered many of them, took their land and "imported" tens of thousands of workers from elsewhere in Africa to recover the diamonds.
They were forced to work in abysmal conditions, and many of them died in the process. The gems they dug up have since been described as the first blood diamonds.
Germany, which had colonized the country in 1884, suddenly controlled an estimated 30 per cent of the world's diamond supplies, with reserves valued at billions of dollars - at 1908 prices, according to Time Magazine.
Germany has previously accepted moral responsibility for what the UN calls the first genocide of the 20th century.
But now or the first time it has made an official apology for the death of 75,000 members of the Herero and Nama tribes, which carries with it an obligation to pay compensation.