Comment by dtx1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dtx1 | Hacker News Reader

> Paramount chief Vekuii Rukoro, leader of the Ovaherero Traditional Authority, has criticised his government for not insisting on financial reparations: “When German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier comes to Namibia to render the apology we will embarrass him,” he told local media.

Imbeciles! Germany could have lived happily ever after ignoring this genocide like lots of western countries ignore theirs. Waste of taxpayers money if you ask me, no one killed back then is still alive, might aswell call it what it is: Development Aid.

The only "embarrassing" thing here is that I, as a German, did not know about this genocide my ancestors did and now i'm left wondering how many other genocides of my country i don't know about.

It's an interesting point. Speaking as an Englishman, how much do we collectively owe the world?

And how far back is a government responsible for it's predecessors actions? There certainly is a point in time where it stops, no one in their right mind would ask for reparations for things that happened in medieval times. But where is that point? I can't say.

As for the English debt, start by acknowledging and teaching the horrors your empire has caused and go from there. The English pride in "Queen and Country" is incomprehensible to me.

British Empire committed countless genocidal acts, but it's often waved away as if it was for the greater good. History is written by rulers, winners and colonizers, nothing new here.

Please could you name a few, it should be easy.

Some were mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27308384 but there's lots more if you do a quick search online.

> no one killed back then is still alive

..yes that's what kills means.

Plenty of non Western countries engaged in genocide. They just didn't keep a record of it.

you can always count on the bigotry of low expectations. If a white majority western country does it, it's bad and they should have known better, if a non-western non-white majority country did it, they didn't know any better and won't be held accountable.

I'm also from Germany and learned about that genocide in school.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com