By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – In its first formal response to a class-action suit filed by the Herero and Nama people of Namibia, Germany has asked a New York judge to throw out the suit as “inadmissible” because of “the principle of state immunity.”
Representatives of the communities directly affected by the 1904-1908 genocide in Namibia have taken the German government to court in New York, demanding damages to be paid directly to the descendants of the Ovaherero and Nama genocide survivors.
In 1904 and 1905 the Ovaherero and Nama of central and southern Namibia rose up against colonial rule and dispossession in what was then called German South West Africa.