Youth Against Poverty

Is Famine A Crime Against Humanity? | UN Dispatch

So can a deliberate famine be a crime against humanity? Yes, and it won’t be the first time. In the early 1900s, the Herero people living in the German colony of Southwest Africa rebelled. In response, the Kaiser ordered General Lother von Trotha to destroy the tribe. To accomplish this, the General employed a simple but brutal strategy: he created an artificial famine. Outmaneuvering the Herero people, he encircled them except for a gap in the direction of the Omaheke desert. Left no where else to go, Herero men, women, and children fled into the desert. Then von Trotha’s men sealed all waterholes around the desert and blocked any escape with 250km of fences, guard posts, and patrols. The Herero tribe was trapped in the desert with no means of acquiring food or water. The general effectively created an artificial famine to do the killing for him. The strategy was a powerful method of killing, before the 1904 rebellion Hereros numbered 80,000 in South West Africa. In 1911, that number was 15,000. In 1985, the United Nations’ Whitaker Report called the German strategy one of the earliest genocides of the 20th century. In 2004, Germany officially apologized.

(Source: snightingale)