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Namibia: Germany Likely to Reject Genocide Motion
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The Namibian (Windhoek)
18 April 2008
Posted to the web 18 April 2008
Brigitte Weidlich
Windhoek
A Motion to acknowledge atrocities committed to Herero, Nama, Damara and San communities a century ago as genocide, which was tabled and debated in the German Bundestag last year, will be rejected by the MPs, the Bundestag Speaker said in Windhoek yesterday.
Dr Norbert Lammert, whose post is the second highest in the German government after the federal president, told reporters that the German MPs still had to vote on the motion of the Left Party, which had been referred to a parliamentary standing committee in the meantime.
"I got a recommendation from that committee that this motion will not find a majority in the Bundestag - it will be rejected," he said. Asked whether this would mean that the approximately 600 German MPs would not declare what happened under colonial rule 100 years ago as 'genocide', Lammert replied that Germany was aware of its special responsibility towards Namibia, but concrete support to Namibians, in the form of development assistance, was far more helpful.
Doreen Sioka, Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, who received Lammert's courtesy call, said that "Namibia and Germany can maybe clear the past because of the history of our ancestors and the Germans, we cannot avoid it." Sioka reminded Lammert that the Namibian Parliament adopted a motion of Herero Chief Kuaima Riruako at the end of 2006, which asked to debate on the "genocide against Namibian people" by the German colonial government.
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The Namibian Government last year officially conveyed the adoption of this motion to the German government in Berlin.
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