Call for Demonstration - It Cannot Be About Us Without Us: Remembrance Protest 08.04 HH

Call for Demonstration / Remembrance Protest:

 14 Uhr Hauptkirche St. Michaelis Englische Planke 1, 20459 Hamburg

Defeat Colonial Amnesia
IT CANNOT BE ABOUT US WITHOUT US
Anything About Us Without Us Is Against Us

In Hamburg’s St. Michael‘s Church a plaque still honours the fallen Hamburg soldiers of the colonial war in today’s Namibia, in the »Baakenhafen« -port the colonial troops received a celebratory farewell, as they left for »German South West Africa« where they would commit a genocide: murdering the people, who fought for freedom from colonial occupation. These are only two locations, which exemplify Hamburg’s colonial amnesia, in a city marked by the traces of its violent colonial past. Up until today, Germany has not recognised the colonial atrocities it is responsible for. Up until today, the Ovaherero and Nama, whose ancestors became victims of the genocide (1904 - 1908) committed by the troops of the German Empire, fight for
RECOGNITION, APOLOGY and REPARATIONS.
Together with leading representatives of the Ovaherero and Nama, who will travel to Germany, we are calling for a commemorative protest on the 8th of April in Hamburg. We march to make the fatal oblivion of colonial violence visible, to raise awareness for the Ovaherero and Nama genocide, and to shed light on the colonial history of the city of Hamburg, which is complicit in these crimes.

We demand:
▪ recognition of the genocide and an oicial apology
by the German Federal Republic.
▪ the German government must stop exclusive
intergovernmental reparation talks and invite
the Ovaherero and Nama to the negotiation
table.
▪ restitution of all human remains from German
archives, museums and collections to he legitimate
representatives of the Ovaherero and
Nama.
▪ establishment of a postcolonial memorial
landscape in Hamburg with direct participation
of civil society and Black communities.

We call upon all groups, initiatives and individuals
from local and trans-regional anti-racist,
postcolonial and emancipatory contexts and
struggles, to join our anti-racist struggle and
ight for a visible decolonial commemorative
culture and a historical reappraisal of a (post)
colonial past and present. March with us on the
8th of April.

The march starts at St. Michaelis church and continues through the city. Route will be announced in advance