October 8, 2011
South Africa call to solve gay 'serial killings'

fyeahafrica:

Rights activists in South Africa have strongly condemned the police for failing to solve the murders of five gay men by a suspected serial killer.

The five were strangled or bludgeoned to death in their Johannesburg homes in the past 18 months, reports say.

The Commission on Gender Equality told the BBC it was concerned about the police’s failure to speedily investigate these alleged hate crimes.

Homophobia is widespread in South Africa, despite its liberal laws.

Johannesburg’s The Star newspaper reported that four of the gay men were tied and strangled in the last 10 months, while the fifth was tied and bludgeoned to death in April last year.

This has raised suspicions that the murders were carried out by a serial killer or a homophobic gang, it reports.

Police found no evidence of forced entry into the homes, suggesting that the killer or killers knew the victims and had been invited in, the newspaper says.

But police spokesman Col Lungelo Dlamini told the BBC there was no evidence of a serial killer on the loose and they were investigating the cases “individually”.

‘Deep-rooted hatred’

The Commission on Gender Equality’s spokesman Javu Baloyi said police should put more effort in their investigations.

“Cases take too long, even if there is compelling evidence of hate crimes,” he told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme.

He said South Africa’s tiny gay and lesbian community was gripped by fear.

“We have got one of the best constitutions. Yet, people have got deep-rooted hatred for gays and lesbians,” Mr Baloyi said.

South Africa is the only African country and one of only 10 in the world to have legalised homosexual marriage.

Its constitution specifically forbids discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Col Dlamini denied that police were slow in investigating hate crimes.

“We investigate each case based on the evidence from the scene and the information at our disposal,” he said.

“We don’t place greater or less importance on any case. We work with the information we can gather.”

Visceral homophobia in its most brutal form…..smh. This needs to end.

(Source: )

4:09am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZvE2KyAQ6KcS
(Notes: 24)
  
Filed under: africa south africa homophobia lgbtq 
September 30, 2011
Germany returns Namibian skulls taken in colonial era

fyeahafrica:

Namibian tribal leaders have visited Berlin to collect the skulls of 20 compatriots who died under Germany’s colonial rule in the early 1900s.

German scientists took the heads to perform experiments seeking to prove the racial superiority of white Europeans over black Africans.

The skulls were uncovered three years ago in medical archive exhibits.

A ceremony was held in the German capital to return the remains as a gesture of reconciliation.

But chaotic scenes accompanied the speeches, particularly an address by German Deputy Foreign Minister Cornelia Pieper.

A handful of demonstrators shouted “reparations”, “apology” and “genocide”.

Germany has consistently refused to pay reparations to its former colony, arguing that it has given much development aid to Namibia. But Namibians at the ceremony said the aid had not reached them.

Earlier, Ueriuka Festus Tjikuua, a member of the Namibian delegation, told reporters: “We have come first and foremost to receive the mortal human remains of our forefathers and mothers and to return them to the land of their ancestors.”

The skulls belong to 20 people who died after an uprising against their German colonial rulers more than 100 years ago.

They were among hundreds who starved to death after being rounded up in camps.

Some of the dead had their heads removed and of these, about 300 were taken to Germany, arriving between 1909 and 1914.

The skulls gathered dust in German archives until three years ago when a German reporter uncovered them at the Medical History Museum of the Charite hospital in Berlin, and at Freiburg University in the south-west.

German researchers believe the skulls belong to 11 people from the Nama ethnic group and nine from the Herero.

They were four women, 15 men and a boy.

‘Nazi forerunner’

Mr Tjikuua said the mission intended to “extend a hand of friendship” to Germans.

Namibians, he said, wished to encourage a dialogue “with the full participation and involvement of the representatives of the descendants of those that suffered heavily under dreadful and atrocious German colonial rule”.

Charite spokeswoman Claudia Peter said the purported research on the skulls performed by German scientists had been rooted in perverse racial theories that later planted the seeds for the Nazis’ genocidal ideology.

“They thought that they could prove that certain peoples were worth less than they were,” she told AFP news agency.

“What these anthropologists did to these people was wrong and their descendants are still suffering for it.”

How the Nazi seeds were planted? Interesting.

(Source: )

2:07pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZvE2KyA71Wqk
(Notes: 66)
  
Filed under: africa colonialism germany inhumanity namibia genocide history news 
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