Namibians welcome home skulls taken to Germany

[October 04, 2011]  WINDHOEK, Namibia (AP) -- With warriors on horseback and teary-eyed women ululating their joy, hundreds of Namibians on Tuesday welcomed home the skulls of ancestors taken to Germany for racist experiments more than a century ago.

The skulls are "testimony to the horrors of colonialism and German cruelty against our people," Prime Minister Nahas Angula said at an airport ceremony. "The Namibian nation accepts these mortal remains as a symbolic closure of a tragic chapter."

German Ambassador Egon Kochanke said he welcomed home the skulls but also indicated it was time for the two countries to move forward.

Some Herero and Nama people made clear they are not so willing to forget the past and waved banners demanding reparations from Germany for what some historians call the first genocide of the 20th century. Historians say German troops killed and starved to death some 60,000 of the 85,000 Herero people from 1904-1907.

"We are ready for battle! We are going to fight!" Herero warriors in military uniform chanted as a leader, chest covered in animal skins, led a cleansing ceremony watched by tribal chiefs in red and yellow hats.

Hundreds of people in ceremonial dress were at the airport -- Nama women in white dresses with gathered skirts, Herero women in scarlet and emerald green Victorian robes topped by headdresses shaped like the horns of cows, which are the traditional source of wealth. They sang hymns and traditional praise songs.

Tears poured down the cheeks of one wrinkle-faced Nama woman as a cortege set off with the boxed skulls escorted by warriors on horseback. Two of the fragile 20 skulls are to be unveiled later Tuesday at another ceremony at Parliament Gardens in downtown Windhoek.

It is not known how many hundreds more skulls may remain in Germany.

Years of acrimonious negotiations led to Tuesday's return. Nama Chief David Fredericks said his people still want all the skulls sent to Germany returned, and they demand to know the names of the people whose skulls have come home.

"I am happy that the skulls have been returned, but we know some have been deliberately made to disappear ... the skulls of chiefs," he said.

Germany only apologized for the massacres in 2004, during ceremonies marking the centenary of the start of the Herero uprising against German colonizers. But the German government does not acknowledge that there was a genocide of the Herero in what it then called German South West Africa.

Germany also has refused Herero demands for reparations, saying it gives generous aid to Namibia's government for all the country's 2 million people.

The skulls of four females and 16 males, including a young boy of about 3, came from Berlin's Charite University. The heads had been removed from their bodies and preserved in formaldehyde intact with faces, skin and hair. Researchers say the skulls do not show any sign of violence, and it is not clear how the people died, though they were possibly victims of German forces in Namibia at the time, or died in a German-run concentration camp.

Once the remains arrived in Berlin, between 1909-1914, scientists tried to prove the "racial superiority" of white Europeans over black Africans by analyzing the facial features of the heads, according to Thomas Schnalke, head of the Berlin Medical Historical Museum.

In the 1920s, the heads were further dissected until only the skulls remained.

[Associated Press; By MICHELLE FAUL]

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