Germany has been prepared to acknowledge the Herero genocide in former German south-west Africa, but at each stage German officials have ruled out reparations. The British government is currently resisting further legal claims by 44,000 Kenyans who allege appalling mistreatment by British authorities in the same context. But when it comes to the matter of colonialism, leaders have been keen to decouple the issue of contrition and reparations.Īfter a lengthy legal campaign, in 2013 the UK government eventually offered “sincere regret” and £2,600 each to around 5,000 people imprisoned and tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s. Equally, German contrition for the Holocaust has been linked with reparations to Israel. When US president Ronald Reagan apologised to Japanese Americans interned in the context of World War II, each surviving victim received $20,000 in compensation. Perhaps they can be a starting point for the serious discussions needed about material redress.Īpologies by states are frequently associated with demands for reparations.
There can be no doubt that politicians are prone to cheap gestures, but maybe apologies have the potential to be more than this. Starting pointĪ common criticism is that state apologies are merely gimmicks and that radical redress and reparations are needed – not empty gestures. Can a French citizen of Algerian descent, for instance, apologise (or have a president apologise on their behalf) for France’s colonial atrocities in Algeria? What would it mean for an African-American president of the US to apologise for slavery? These examples create dizzying situations where one could be both recipient and giver of apology. The issue of intergenerational injustice is further complicated by our multi-cultural, yet vastly unequal, societies. A problematic example here is Turkey being asked to apologise for the Armenian genocide when the event occurred before the establishment of Turkey as a republic in 1923. It also assumes that the same state that perpetrated the crimes remains intact today. This only works when it was the state that committed the violations, rather than settlers or organisations acting independently of the state. In this sense, political leaders, as representatives of the culpable entity, should apologise on behalf of the state and its citizens for the state’s misdeeds. Moreover, clearly many white Europeans also suffered in the colonial process, just as not all benefit from modern capitalism or 21st century overseas wars.Ī potential solution to this for those that advocate apology is to acknowledge that the current generation did not do wrong, but their state did. There’s little doubt that many accrued their contemporary privilege through empire – but this position lacks any nuance in distinguishing between the perpetrators, foot soldiers, onlookers, objectors and the current generation.
As such, the privileged among the current generation acquire guilt by virtue of the fact that their favourable position in the contemporary capitalist system has its roots in empire.īut there are problems with this argument. A counter argument is that, while the current generation did not actually commit the crimes, many within it still reap the rewards of a world in which white Europeans and the descendents of white settlers remain disproportionately privileged in comparison to the peoples they once conquered.