Famous German publicist Günter Neumann in an article entitled "First class genocide, second class genocide?", which was published in Zurich-based German-language newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, complains of Europe’s double standards regarding the issue of genocides.

“It (Europe) must recognize massive crimes of its colonial history," says Neumann referring to Herero and Namaqua genocide, committed by German troops in Namibia between 1904 and 1908.

Citing the German general Lothar von Trotha’s order to annihilate Herero, including women and children, Neumann adds that as a result of the genocide the population of 80,000 Herero was reduced to 15,000.

The author notes that Germany has always denied the genocide, arguing that the UN Convention on Genocide does not have retrospective force.

Neumann says that the request to recognize the Herero genocide was rejected by the Bundestag, although German President Joachim Gauck abstained from retrospective application of the term in 1948 and named deprivation of Armenians as "genocide."

Neumann argues it is sometimes very difficult to admit their crimes, and recalls the dark pages of Belgian colonial empire in the Congo, colonial history of France in Algeria as well as of Japan in the Far East. Perhaps the central idea of the article is the following: "Herero do not have a diaspora and eloquent lobby, they either don’t have a literature about this tragedy, unlike Armenians, who used Franz Werfel."

Indeed, this is the reason why the whole world is talking about the Armenians, but no one knows about the tragedy of two Namibian tribes or even crimes committed by the Armenians against the civilian Turkish population. The reason is the lobby and the diaspora.

Very often the victims of genocide are transformed into culprits, and there is nothing new, if we look at the Middle East, Rwanda or Nagorno-Karabakh. The motive is remarkably similar in all cases: a fanatical inferiority complex, incitement, revenge or simply fear. Armenia, for example, occupies almost a quarter of the territory of Azerbaijan, and about a million of its inhabitants became refugees," the author writes.

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