Narrate Shark Island story fully - Riruako

WINDHOEK NAMENE HELMICH The dark episode of Shark Island - a notorious concentration camp manned by the German colonial masters near Lüderitz - must be told in its entirety so that the young generations understand fully why statues in remembrance of such events are being erected. These are the views of OvaHerero Paramount Chief Kuaima Riruako, who was commenting on revelations that a statue in remembrance of OvaHerero and Nama genocide victims will be erected at the Independence Museum in Windhoek. Riruako this week talked about concentration camps where many OvaHerero and Nama men, women and children died at the hands of German imperial troops from 1904 to 1908 after an extermination order was issued to wipe out the OvaHerero and Nama tribes. “It was a terrible time in our history and many people don't even know it but we need to educate our people so that is why I am so happy that the new Independence Memorial Museum will have a statue to commemorate the genocide that took place. “People died horrible deaths in those concentration camps after Shark Island and I welcome the news of the statue as it will help to educate our people. We cannot afford to forget our history,” Riruako said. He said prisoners were tortured in different ways, beheaded and even thrown into the sea for the sharks to eat. Shark Island off Lüderitz was used as a German concentration camp during the Herero and Nama genocide. According to the head of the National Museum, Esther Mwoombola-/Goagoses, archive information indicates that between 1 032 and 3 000 Herero and Nama men, women, and children died in the camp between its opening in 1905 and its closing in April 1907. Following the abandonment of the policy of exterminating Herero people within the borders of German South-West Africa by denying them access to water holes, the colonial authorities adopted a policy of sweeping the bush clear of Herero and removing them, either voluntarily or by force, to concentration camps. Other camps were at Swakopmund, Okahandja and Windhoek - the latter situated where the Independence Memorial Museum has been built. Shark Island was chosen due to the difficulty of escape, the nearby presence of large numbers of German soldiers, and the need for labour in the region where they were building a railway connecting Lüderitz with Aus. “Although there are records of Herero prisoners of war being held in Lüderitz Bay as early as 1904, the first references to a camp at Shark Island and the transfer of large numbers of Herero prisoners from Keetmanshoop are in March 1905. Word quickly spread among the Herero about the conditions at the camp, with prisoners in other parts of German South-West Africa reportedly committing suicide rather than being deported to Lüderitz due to the stories of harsh conditions there in late 1905,” related Mwoombola-/Goagoses. Arrival of Nama prisoners Whilst the Germans initially followed a policy of sending people from the south to concentration camps in the north, and vice versa, meaning that Nama prisoners mostly went to the concentration camp in Windhoek, by mid-1906 Germans in Windhoek were becoming increasingly concerned about the presence of so many prisoners in their town. In response to these concerns, in 1906 the Germans began to transfer Nama prisoners to Shark Island, sending them by train to Swakopmund and then by sea to Lüderitz. By late 1906, 2 000 Namas were prisoners on the island. The prisoners held on Shark Island were used as forced labour by private companies in the Lüderitz area, working on infrastructure projects such as railway construction, the building of the harbour, and flattening and levelling Shark Island with the use of explosives. This dangerous and physical work inevitably led to large-scale illness and death among the prisoners, with one German technician complaining that the 1 600-strong Nama workforce had shrunk to only 30 or 40 available for work due to seven or eight deaths occurring daily by late 1906. The policy of forced labour officially ended when prisoner-of-war status for the Herero and Nama was revoked on April 1, 1908, although Herero and Nama continued to work on colonial projects after this. Closing of camp The decision to close the camp was made by Major Ludwig von Estorff, who had signed the agreement under which the Witboois (a Nama clan) had surrendered to the Germans, after a visit to the camp in early 1907. After the closing of the camp, prisoners were transferred to an open area near Radford Bay. Although mortality rates were still high initially in the new camp, they eventually declined. The precise number of deaths at the camp are unknown but a report by the German Imperial Colonial Office estimated 7 682 Herero and 2 000 Nama dead at all camps in German South-West Africa, of which a significant portion died on Shark Island. A military official at the camp estimated that 1 032 of the 1 795 prisoners held at the camp in September 1906 had died. It is estimated that eventually only 245 of these prisoners survived. The overall death toll at the camp has been estimated at 3 000. Combined with deaths amongst prisoners held elsewhere in Lüderitz Bay, the total may well exceed 4 000. The vast majority of prisoners died of preventable diseases such as typhoid and scurvy brought on by malnutrition, over-work and the unsanitary conditions in the camps. The skulls of dead prisoners were kept to be used in medical research programmes at several German universities to prove that the indigenous peoples of German South-West Africa were of an inferior race. In 2011 a number of these skulls (11 Nama and nine Herero) were returned from German institutions to Namibia. They were taken from Namibia to the pathological institute in Berlin and other German research institutions for 'scientific measuring'. The Herero and Nama genocide has been recognised by the United Nations and by the German Federal Republic. At the 100th anniversary of the camp's foundation, the then German minister for economic development and cooperation, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, commemorated the dead on site and apologised for the camp on behalf of Germany. WINDHOEK NAMENE HELMICH