What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White
What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White
Know Anyone Who Thinks Racial Profiling Is Exaggerated? Watch This, And Tell Me When Your Jaw Drops.
This video clearly demonstrates how racist America is as a country and how far we have to go to become a country that is civilized and actually values equal justice. We must not rest until this goal is achieved. I do not want my great grandchildren to live in a country like we have today. I wish for them to live in a country where differences of race and culture are not ignored but valued as a part of what makes America great.
ICE Says Detainees Are ‘Worst of the Worst.’ Government Data Disagrees.
"Federal officials said they are removing killers and rapists from the streets. Data obtained by The New York Times indicates most detainees at a Newark facility haven’t been convicted of crimes.
Delaney Hall, an immigration detention center in New Jersey, has been the site of persistent and at times violent clashes between law enforcement officers and protesters over the past two weeks.Todd Heisler/The New York Times
When reports emerged last month that immigrants held at a Newark detention center were staging a hunger strike to protest conditions there, demonstrators mobilized and New Jersey’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, demanded to be let in so that she could inspect the building.
Federal officials rejected her demand and said that she and other Democratic officials in New Jersey should be grateful that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was removing killers, rapists and other criminals — “the worst of the worst,” they said — from the state.
But the federal government’s own data, including some from internal documents The New York Times obtained this week, indicates that people with criminal convictions account for just a fraction of the detainees at the Newark center, Delaney Hall.
In early April, ICE stopped updating its once-regular public reports on the number of people being detained at its facilities. The internal data obtained by The Times shows that of 591 people held at Delaney Hall this week, 76 — about 13 percent — had criminal convictions and 123 — about 21 percent — had pending criminal charges.
The detainees had been at the center for about 80 days on average, the data shows.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement on Friday that it was “working rapidly and overtime to remove these aliens from detentions centers to their final destination — home.”
Delaney Hall’s population has dropped sharply since ICE’s April report, which showed 891 people (833 men and 58 women) being held there as of April 2. Less than 10 percent — 61 men and two women — were classified as criminals.
When people are detained, and then periodically during their detention, they are divided into categories that reflect the level of security risk they are believed to pose and then housed accordingly, according to ICE.
The categories — low, medium low, medium high and high — are based on factors such as previous convictions, disciplinary records and “special management concerns,” ICE says. As of April 2, just one Delaney Hall detainee was considered a high security risk, ICE data shows; 789, or just under 90 percent, were deemed low risk.
Immigration officials also assign detainees to “ICE threat level” categories determined by their “criminality,” including “the recency of the criminal behavior and its severity.” They are ranked on a scale of 1 to 3, with 1 being the most severe. Detainees with no criminal convictions are classified as “no ICE threat level.”
As of April 2, just six detainees were classified in the highest threat level. About 90 percent were said to be no ICE threat, agency data shows.
“If you were looking for an ICE facility that holds a large number of dangerous criminals,” Austin Kocher, a political and legal geographer and research assistant professor at Syracuse University, wrote ina recent edition of his newsletter on Substack, “Delaney Hall just isn’t it.”
Professor Kocher, whose research focuses on the politics and policies of the U.S. immigration and refugee system, did a more fine-grained analysis of the criminal detainee population. He used data from theDeportation Data Project, which collects and posts government immigration enforcement data sets, some released voluntarily by the government and some obtained through public records requests.
He found that of 844 people detained at Delaney Hall as of March 10, about 12 percent were convicted criminals, about 18 percent had pending criminal charges and about 70 percent had been accused only of immigration violations.
Of the 99 people with criminal convictions, none had been found guilty of homicide, sexual assault or drug trafficking. About 70 percent were convicted of misdemeanors; just nine had felonies, according to Professor Kocher.
For the past two weeks, Delaney Hall has been the site of steady and sometimes violent confrontations between protesters and law enforcement officers. At least 90 protesters have been arrested since May 26.
As Ms. Sherrill sought access to the center, federal officials insisted that detainees were being well cared for and denied there was a hunger strike. They accused her of engaging in a “political stunt.”
“These sanctuary politicians should be thanking ICE law enforcement for removing murderers, rapists, pedophiles and drug traffickers from their communities,” Lauren Bis, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman,said in a statementon May 25. “We need these sanctuary politicians to stop peddling this garbage and cooperate with us.”
The statement was accompanied by a list of 16 detainees who had been arrested in New Jersey, with brief descriptions of what was described as each one’s “criminal history.”
The offenses cited included homicide, sexual assault, drug trafficking, aggravated assault, illegal possession of a weapon and enticement of a minor for indecent purposes. It was unclear whether a “criminal history” reflected convictions, charges or some combination.
Delaney Hall is run by GEO Group, one of the largest private prison operators in the United States, under a $1 billion, 15-year federal contract.
The two-story center has 1,000 beds, according to aGEO Group news releasefrom last year, and a permitted capacity of just under 1,200 beds, according tofilings in a company lawsuitagainst New Jersey officials.
Asked this week for current data on the detainees and their criminal records, the Department of Homeland Security responded with a statement that did not include the requested information.
“It is a crime to enter the United States illegally,” the statement said. “Everyone being held inside Delaney Hall broke the law. If you come to our country illegally, we will find you and arrest you.”
Allison McCanncontributed reporting.
Ed Shanahanis a rewrite reporter and editor covering breaking news and general assignments on the Metro desk.
Hamed Aleazizcovers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times."
As Trump Pushes Deportations, a Skyrocketing Caseload Strains Immigration Courts
"A federal surge has more than doubled caseloads within some immigration courts nationwide. Lawyers say the tactic is causing errors and confusion.
Immigrants waited in a packed hallway for their hearings at the Annandale Immigration Court in Annandale, Va., on Tuesday.Salwan Georges for The New York Times
Jazmine Ulloa, who reported from Chicago, and Hamed Aleaziz, who reported from Washington, cover immigration.
Federal officials have quietly begun fast-tracking cases through immigration courts, pushing dozens of additional cases onto the dockets on certain days in an effort to more quickly process asylum and other claims.
The fast-tracking, which is also intended to increase the pace of deportations, started without any formal notification or announcement from the Trump administration, according to immigration lawyers and court officials interviewed by The New York Times. But a surge of cases has been apparent in numerous courts around the country. Some judges have seen their caseloads double and triple, prompting worries that cases are being rushed through, violating due process rights.
At separate courthouses in Annandale and Sterling, Va., in recent days, Times reporters observed long lines and packed dockets. Some immigration judges saw their caseloads more than double, with as many as 100 adults waiting for their cases to be heard. In Annandale, the caseloads have included dozens of unaccompanied minors.
Lines were also evident at a courthouse in downtown Chicago on a recent weekday, with families spilling out of waiting areas and into hallways. Many cases were being processed in small groups, or in several instances with more than two dozen people appearing at once.
And in New Orleans, lawyers saw the number of cases increase to more than 200 on Monday and Tuesday in one courtroom alone. The judges at that courthouse typically take only about 30 to 40 cases per day, lawyers said. The morning dockets were so packed and chaotic that lawyers wishing to observe or monitor the proceedings were not allowed in to watch.
Federal officials say that speeding through cases will help alleviate backlogs that have led some asylum and immigration relief claims to languish for years. The slow pace of the process, they contend, creates incentives for people to enter the United States to file claims that may be weak or invalid.
The Justice Department said in a statement that clearing the court backlog was a top priority for the administration, and that it was hearing the cases fairly and in accordance with the law.
An official with the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which is part of the Justice Department and oversees the immigration court system, said the larger caseloads were a result of the court hiring new immigration judges, and described them as necessary to clear a backlog of upward of 3 million cases this year, according to federal figures.
But immigration lawyers and rights groups counter that the sudden acceleration of the process risks errors, denies immigrants due process and leaves people with little time to find lawyers.
“Everything related to these large dockets or mass dockets is shrouded in such a strange secrecy,” said Gracie Willis, an attorney with the National Immigration Project, a nonprofit that provides legal services for immigrants. “Our confirmation that they were even happening really came from going to the court on Monday and seeing the large lines of people standing outside,” she added, referring to the proceedings she observed in New Orleans.
The surge comes at a time of upheaval for Mr. Trump’s immigration strategy. On Friday, a federal judge rejected the government’s indefinite hold on asylum applicationsfiled with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and on immigration applications from people from 39 countries who had been unable to obtain green cards and citizenship. The ruling is not expected to have a major impact on immigration courts.
This week, the Supreme Court alsodeclined to review a rulingfrom the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit requiring the government to take more steps to notify immigrants of their hearing dates if their notices are returned in the mail.
Unlike judges in criminal and civil courts, immigration judges are part of the executive branch, andthe Trump administration has taken steps to align them with the president’spledge to deport record numbers of people. The administration has fired judges seen as insufficiently supportive of the agenda, and has narrowed the factors that qualify people for asylum.
The judges who remain have been under pressure to issue deportation orders and rule against asylum cases,a Times investigation found. The rate of asylum grants is the lowest since 2009, according to data analyzed by The Times.
Typical “master” calendar hearings are already crowded sessions where an immigration judge can handle dozens of cases at a time, all of which can be in different stages. They review claims, consider challenges and schedule court dates for people seeking asylum, humanitarian protections and an array of other forms of legal relief that can temporarily shield immigrants from deportation or set them on the path to legal permanent residency.
Many attorneys have taken to informally calling the new, heavily packed proceedings “mega master” calendar hearings.
In New Orleans, Ms. Willis, the attorney, said the dockets she watched included a mix of people: respondents who were appearing in immigration court for the first time, along with immigrants who had trials already set for 2027 but were called in for minor updates on their cases, such as the verification of their addresses.
Some had received notices of their new court appearances the month before, but others had been called in only two weeks earlier, or even more recently, she said.
Lawyers said that they had observed judges taking in groups of people at a time, despite their different pleadings and cases. In one instance, a judge saw 15 people at once, running through Arabic, Spanish and Creole interpretations, Ms. Willis said.
On Monday and Tuesday, 89 people in one court alone were declared absent, and were therefore deportable, she added. “And that is not because they were ‘the worst of the worst.’ It is because they had a hearing scheduled that they were not able to attend for a variety of reasons,” Ms. Willis said.
In Courtroom 11 in Chicago on May 26, Judge Peter A. Kim addressed a group of more than 20 immigrants, a reporter observed. He told them that they had 20 days to submit their cases in writing, and warned that the next hearing would be their final opportunity to make the case to remain in the United States.
Alex, a maintenance worker from Honduras, and his adult son were among the immigrants who received the warning. Alex spoke to The Times on the condition that only his first name be used, because he fears government retaliation.
He and his son applied for asylum and obtained temporary humanitarian passage into the country in 2023, but the form of relief is set to expire in December, and their asylum petition remains pending.
He said that he worried that the government’s push to quickly close their case would leave them with no relief. “All we can have is hope and faith in God,” he said.
“It is not a bad thing to want to prioritize older cases,” Briana Carlson, an immigration lawyer who represents clients in Sterling, Va., said of the case dockets. “But when we are taking away the power of judges to have individualized hearings, that is problematic.”
In Annandale, immigrants and their children recently filled a courtroom as a judge heard about 60 cases during hearings that stretched more than seven hours last week.
Yuvora Nong, an immigration lawyer in Virginia, showed up to the courthouse for a separate hearing scheduled for his client at 1 p.m. one day. But the judge, Raphael Choi, was still working through the day’s caseload surge, and had 15 cases left to hear by day’s end.
Judge Choi told Mr. Nong that his client’s case would have to be postponed — to May 2027.
On May 29, Maria Martinez, another Annandale lawyer, had clients from El Salvador and Venezuela sitting in her law office for more than eight hours as they waited to go before a judge by video. They had been scheduled to appear around 8:30 a.m., but as the judge toiled through a packed caseload, the wait stretched on.
“Family members had to bring them food because they were too scared to leave the office and miss their hearing,” Ms. Martinez said.
Minutes before the judge’s computer shut down for the day, he bunched the last six cases together, Ms. Martinez said. Speeding through, he did not even have time to check whether her clients were present, she added.
Reporting was contributed byRobert Chiaritofrom Chicago,Madeleine Ngofrom Annandale, Va.,Orlando MayorquÃnfrom San Diego and Allison McCann from New York."
“A tenured art therapy professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago was suspended after a student complained about a case study mentioning violence against Palestinians. The student, involved in separate investigations regarding alleged antisemitism, claimed the assignment was discriminatory. The professor, who denies any wrongdoing, argues the suspension is motivated by the mere mention of Palestine and plans to file a discrimination complaint.
School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor put under investigation after a student complained about a case study
A tenured art therapy professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago(SAIC) was suspended from teaching and placed under investigation following a student’s complaint about an assigned case study that mentioned violence against Palestinians.
Savneet Talwar, a faculty member with the school’s art therapy and counseling program, assigned the case study in April to a class on the cultural dimensions of therapy. The assignment asked students to develop an ethical treatment plan for a hypothetical queer, Muslim woman living in the US.
The language of the assignment read: “While she was not particularly politically active in her home country, protests in support of Palestineresonated with her on a personal level. She felt deeply affected by the violence against Palestinian civilians and was critical of the home government’s limited response.”
The two-page assignment, which was reviewed by the Guardian, mostly focused on other elements of the client’s case, including her family history, relationships and status as an immigrant. It made no additional references to Palestine or Palestinians, and no mention of Israel. But Talwar’s department had already been mired in multiple complaints and investigations about alleged antisemitism involving the same student, and faculty had been required to take anti-bias training as the school sought to address the “climate” in the department.
The school was also sued in late 2023 by an Israeli student in the same program over alleged antisemitism, including an assignment for which students were asked to review images drawn by children depicting violence by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian civilians.
After Talwar’s student received the case study, the professor got a call from a dean asking whether she had assigned “anything with Palestine in it”. She was then called into an “urgent” meeting with the school’s provost, and her class for the following day was canceled. The following day, on 17 April, the school formally notified Talwar that she was being put on paid leave, and forbade her from speaking about the matter with students and colleagues. The case study was removed from an online learning platform used for the class. In a letter, a school official warned Talwar that assigning the student the case study may constitute “discrimination, harassment and/or retaliation”.
According to the letter, the student was also involved in separate investigations “involving claims by her as a Jewish Israeli related to alleged conduct expressing an anti-Israeli, antisemitic, and/or pro-Palestine viewpoint”. The official wrote that despite being aware of the other investigations, Talwar “gave an academic assignment that focused solely on the issues of a Muslim woman with strong sympathies for the Palestinian cause”. In a separate letter to Talwar, a dean appeared to question her judgment for assigning the case study under the ongoing “circumstances”.
“One of the reasons this issue raises such serious concerns is that there have been multiple, prior complaints alleging the creation of a hostile environment within your department,” the dean wrote.
Talwar told the Guardian in an exclusive interview that she was “stunned” by a suspension that appeared to be motivated by “the mere mention of the word Palestine”.
A spokesperson for SAIC declined to comment on personnel matters or ongoing investigations, but said that the school is committed “to learning environments in which ideas are freely exchanged and students and faculty are welcomed, respected, and valued”. The Guardian could not reach the student who complained.
Talwar, through an attorney, submitted a formal grievance letter and argued that the suspension might itself be discriminatory. Nearly a month after she had been suspended from teaching, on 13 May, school officials outlined other issues involving the same student that predated the case study.
The school officials cited included exchanges in which Talwar allegedly characterized the Bondi beach terror attack in Australia as “gun violence” without acknowledging antisemitism, and suggested that the student “consider” whether or not to attend a lecture by a guest described as a “strong anti-Zionist activist”.
Talwar declined to respond to allegations involving the student, citing confidentiality she is bound to. She flatly rejected that the case study she assigned was antisemitic or discriminatory in any way, and plans to file a formal employment discrimination complaint against the school.
Rima Kapitan, her attorney, said in a letter to school officials that they don’t even have a clear “theory of discrimination”. She wrote that Talwar had “bent over backwards” to accommodate the student.
“Are SAIC faculty expected to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their course materials? Are Arab Muslims unworthy of their own case studies?” Kapitan wrote. “If a white supremacist student filed a discrimination complaint with the University alleging that he was triggered by a case study about a Black client who was struggling with police violence against Black people, would SAIC proceed with an investigation against the professor who drafted the assignment?”
Talwar said her case was an example of mounting “political pressure” in higher education.
“We call it the ‘P-word’ now,” she said, referring to faculty’s hesitation to discuss Palestine amid a repressive climate on US college campuses. “There is no tolerance for the very word.”
(As usual European colonialists minimize the numbers of people they murder in their colonization of indigenous populations.
What is Genocide?
One of five hundred children’s drawings collected by Waging Peace showing killings, bombing and looting committed by government troops. In November 2007, the drawings were accepted by the International Criminal Court as contextual evidence of the crimes committed in Darfur.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Genocide is defined as an act committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The term ‘genocide’ was coined in 1944 by the Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In creating the term ‘genocide’, Lemkin intended to more clearly define the crime of mass murder of groups of people and to raise awareness of it.
Genocide became a crime in itself following the adoption of the ‘Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’ by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948, as result of the events of the Holocaust. The Convention came into force on 12 January 1951.
Various different acts are defined in the convention as acts of genocide, including:
Killing members of a group.
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The Stages of Genocide
In 1987, Gregory Stanton, a professor of law, published a paper which explored how genocides develop and unfold.
In his original work, Stanton identified eight key stages which resulted in acts of genocide. According to Stanton’s model, some of these stages can happen at the same time or in a different order. In 2012, Stanton expanded on these ideas, and added two further stages (Discrimination and Persecution) to make ten. According to Stanton’s current model, therefore, the stages of genocide are as follows:
Classification – Dividing people into ‘them’ and ‘us’.
Symbolisation – Forcing groups to wear or be associated with symbols which identify them as different.
Discrimination – Excluding groups from participating in civil society, such as by excluding them from voting or certain places. In Nazi Germany, for example, Jews were not allowed to sit on certain park benches.
Dehumanisation – To deny the humanity of one group, and associate them with animals or diseases in order to belittle them.
Organisation – Training police or army units and providing them with weapons and knowledge in order to persecute a group in future.
Polarisation – Using propaganda to polarise society, create distance and exclude a group further.
Preparation – Planning of mass murder and identifying specific victims.
Persecution – Incarcerating groups in ghettos or concentration camps , forcibly displacing groups, expropriating property, belongings or wealth.
Extermination – Committing mass murder.
Denial – Denial of any crimes. This does not necessarily mean denying that the acts of murder happened, but denying that these acts were a crime, and were in fact justified.
Stanton hoped that by identifying these stages it would be easier to recognise genocide before it took place and thus stop it from happening.
The Herero and Namaqua Genocide
A photograph showing German forces gathered in GSWA to join in the conflict against the Herero people in 1904.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons [Public Domain].
The Herero and Namaqua Genocide was the massacre of approximately 50,000 – 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama between 1904 and 1907 by German military forces in German South West Africa (GSWA) – modern-day Namibia .
—————————————————————————————————-
‘They are disturbing the dead’: reconstructing the site of the forgotten first genocide of the 20th century
Summary
The exhibition “Fractured Lifeworlds” in Berlin, created by Forensic Architecture and Forensis, uses digital technology to investigate the legacy of the Herero and Nama genocide in Namibia. The exhibition examines how colonial violence is inscribed into the Namibian landscape, focusing on sites like Shark Island, where a concentration camp operated from 1905 to 1907. The exhibition also highlights the ongoing impact of colonialism, including the Hyphen project, a green hydrogen initiative that threatens to disturb ancestral lands and burial grounds.
At least 3,000 Herero and Nama people died in a German concentration camp at Shark Island, Namibia. A new forensic exhibition in Berlin is using digital technology to unearth how colonisers scarred a landscape, and a community
Hanno Hauenstein
A black and white photograph of 1897 Namibian grassland showing a large tree, hills, and mountains
‘A digital shield against historical denial’ … an 1897 photograph from Hatsamas, Namibia, matched with a 3D digital reconstruction. Photograph: Forensic Architecture/Forensis, 2025
Visiting the Namibian port town of Lüderitz in late 2024, I came across a small museum run by descendants of German settlers. Alongside imperial German flags and memorabilia, it displayed artefacts of the Herero tribe that had been recovered from nearby Shark Island. What went unmentioned is that, from 1905 to 1907, Shark Island was the site of a concentration camp where Herero and Nama prisoners were subjected to forced labour, starvation and systematic abuse. At least 3,000 people are estimated to have died there.
Shark Island was used as a tourist campsite when I visited. Monuments on the island honoured Adolf Lüderitz and Heinrich Vogelsang, the German merchants who helped establish the colony known as German South West Africa. Today, it is widely reported that Namibia’s white minority – less than 2% of the population – owns roughly 70% of commercial farmland.
Fractured Lifeworlds, a new exhibition opening in Berlin this week, is built around questions of memory, geography and accountability. The show presents four years of research by Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary research agency that uses visual reconstructions to investigate human rights abuses from Syria and Palestine to Greece and Germany.
Produced jointly with its Berlin-based sister organisation Forensis and developed in collaboration with Namibian researchers, the exhibition traces the legacy of what has been described as the first genocide of the 20th century. Originally presented at Namibia’s National Art Gallery in Windhoek last year, it now arrives at Spore Initiative in the form of three seasonal chapters, Bush, Wind and Sand, each examining how colonial violence became inscribed into Namibia’s arid landscape.
The show’s centrepiece is a series of films that combine oral testimony from descendants of genocide victims with meticulous geological research. An eerie 30-minute film on Shark Island reconstructs the concentration camp, showing how German authorities weaponised the island’s harsh environment against prisoners – and shipped their skulls back to Germany for pseudoscientific research. The investigation also identifies sand mounts nearby, believed to be unmarked mass graves for prisoners killed on Shark Island.
Underneath Shark Island, the Lüderitz port is set to expand as part of Hyphen, a multibillion-euro British-German green hydrogen project developed in Namibia. The project would use Namibia’s rich wind and solar resources to produce green hydrogen and ammonia for export. For Germany, it promises clean energy and greater independence from foreign fossil fuels.
For many Nama and Herero descendants, it recalls familiar patterns of extraction. Much of the project’s infrastructure is being developed across a 4,000 sq km area of ancestral land that belongs to Nama communities. According to human rights groups, they have been excluded from any meaningfully participation in the project.
Before and after images of Hatsamas, Namibia.
Before and after images of Hatsamas, Namibia. Photograph: Forensic Architecture/Forensis
Many descendants also fear that the Hyphen project could undermine efforts to preserve Namibia’s sites of the genocide as places of remembrance. Sima Luipert, adviser to the Nama Traditional Leaders Association (NTLA) and a collaborator on the exhibition, fears the port expansion could disturb burial grounds. “When they dredge, they don’t seem to realise that they are not simply moving dirt. They are disturbing the dead,” she says. “The water is the burial site.”
Germany refuses to pay reparations to Herero and Nama descendants, offering instead development aid payments negotiated with the Namibian government. When Germany formally recognised the atrocities in 2021, it described them as a genocide “from today’s perspective” – a formulation critics say avoids the legal and political implications of recognition. By that logic, no act committed before the 1948 genocide convention could fully qualify as such.
To Luipert, the agreement reflects a glaring double standard. “Germany can swiftly compensate victims of the Holocaust while invoking strict legal technicalities to deny reparations to Africans,” she says. To her, the show is a way to provide evidence – “a digital shield against historical denial”.
In recent years, Forensic Architecture’s work has divided opinion. Critics see its work as persuasive visualisations built on evidence that can be ambiguous; supporters argue the collective has pioneered new ways of exposing structures of violence that might otherwise remain hidden or obscured.
In the works presented in Berlin, transparency about methodology is central. This is perhaps most convincing in a film on the Hornkranz massacre of 1893, when German colonial troops under Curt von François attacked the settlement of Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi, killing dozens of civilians. Drawing on oral histories, photographs and in-depth analysis of changes in the landscape, the film reconstructs an atrocity largely absent from German collective memory.
The film’s process of reconstruction is visible throughout the exhibition space. Historical drawings, maps and a letter by Von François are displayed alongside digital models that imagine how the village might have looked before the massacre.
Evidence of a massacre: spent cartridges at Horncranz, dating back to 1893
Evidence of a massacre: spent cartridges at Horncranz, dating back to 1893. Photograph: Forensic Architecture/Forensis
Mark Mushiba, the lead curator of Fractured Lifeworlds and a researcher at Forensis, explains that historians have largely relied on colonial documents. Forensic Architecture and Forensis instead sought to “read the landscape”. In Hornkranz – which is now used as a private farm – that meant locating old bullet cartridges, identifying former homesteads through distinctive vegetation patterns and treating plants as historical evidence. “We were absolutely shocked by the lack of physical investigation that was done here,” Mushiba says.
Forensic Architecture founder Eyal Weizman describes their approach in Namibia as a form of “forensic botany”. With Forensis, the research agency analysed shades of grey in colonial photographs to infer patterns of grass density, and combined these findings with other sources to reconstruct the erasure of local communities. The aim is to recover a record inscribed in the landscape. In Weizman’s words, the show is about finding ways to “send a satellite back in time”.
This approach is mirrored in a work titled Satellite Images of Hatsamas, consisting of three digital prints in flashy red and green tones. Combining local knowledge, historical photographs and modern satellite data, the prints aim to visualise changes in vegetation over 150 years. The result will show how colonial settlement has shaped the land, leading to bush encroachment and desertification.
Contemporary artworks add a further layer to the show. Tuli Mekondjo contributes an embroidered Herero uniform titled Schutztruppe. Originally worn by German colonial soldiers, the garment was adopted by Herero communities as an act of resistance and commemoration. By stitching a human skeleton on to the fabric, Mekondjo transforms it into a wearable memorial for prisoners who died on Shark Island.
In speaking about the exhibition, Weizman repeatedly returns to the relationship between genocide and the desert: from the forced marches of Armenians into the Syrian desert to Gaza, where widespread destruction has transformed much of the territory into flattened terrain. Fractured Lifeworlds shows how colonial violence leaves traces in the land. As Germany continues to debate the meaning and scope of its memory culture, this exhibition is a timely reminder that the past remains part of the present.
Fractured Lifeworlds is at Spore Initiative, Berlin, from 7 June to 30 April”
“The exhibition “Fractured Lifeworlds” in Berlin, created by Forensic Architecture and Forensis, uses digital technology to investigate the legacy of the Herero and Nama genocide in Namibia. The exhibition examines how colonial violence is inscribed into the Namibian landscape, focusing on sites like Shark Island, where a concentration camp operated from 1905 to 1907. The exhibition also highlights the ongoing impact of colonialism, including the Hyphen project, a green hydrogen initiative that threatens to disturb ancestral lands and burial grounds.
At least 3,000 Herero and Nama people died in a German concentration camp at Shark Island, Namibia. A new forensic exhibition in Berlin is using digital technology to unearth how colonisers scarred a landscape, and a community
‘A digital shield against historical denial’ … an 1897 photograph from Hatsamas, Namibia, matched with a 3D digital reconstruction. Photograph: Forensic Architecture/Forensis, 2025
Visiting the Namibian port town of Lüderitz in late 2024, I came across a small museum run by descendants of German settlers. Alongside imperial German flags and memorabilia, it displayed artefacts of the Herero tribe that had been recovered from nearby Shark Island. What went unmentioned is that, from 1905 to 1907, Shark Island was the site of a concentration camp where Herero and Nama prisoners were subjected to forced labour, starvation and systematic abuse. At least 3,000 people are estimated to have died there.
Shark Island was used as a tourist campsite when I visited. Monuments on the island honoured Adolf Lüderitz and Heinrich Vogelsang, the German merchants who helped establish the colony known as German South West Africa. Today, it is widely reported that Namibia’s white minority – less than 2% of the population – owns roughly 70% of commercial farmland.
Fractured Lifeworlds, a new exhibition opening in Berlin this week, is built around questions of memory, geography and accountability. The show presents four years of research by Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary research agency that uses visual reconstructions to investigate human rights abuses from Syria and Palestine to Greece and Germany.
Produced jointly with its Berlin-based sister organisation Forensis and developed in collaboration with Namibian researchers, the exhibition traces the legacy of what has been described as the first genocide of the 20th century. Originally presented at Namibia’s National Art Gallery in Windhoek last year, it now arrives at Spore Initiative in the form of three seasonal chapters, Bush, Wind and Sand, each examining how colonial violence became inscribed into Namibia’s arid landscape.
The show’s centrepiece is a series of films that combine oral testimony from descendants of genocide victims with meticulous geological research. An eerie 30-minute film on Shark Island reconstructs the concentration camp, showing how German authorities weaponised the island’s harsh environment against prisoners – and shipped their skulls back to Germany for pseudoscientific research. The investigation also identifies sand mounts nearby, believed to be unmarked mass graves for prisoners killed on Shark Island.
Underneath Shark Island, the Lüderitz port is set to expand as part of Hyphen, a multibillion-euro British-German green hydrogen project developed in Namibia. The project would use Namibia’s rich wind and solar resources to produce green hydrogen and ammonia for export. For Germany, it promises clean energy and greater independence from foreign fossil fuels.
For many Nama and Herero descendants, it recalls familiar patterns of extraction. Much of the project’s infrastructure is being developed across a 4,000 sq km area of ancestral land that belongs to Nama communities. According to human rights groups, they have been excluded from any meaningfully participation in the project.
Before and after images of Hatsamas, Namibia. Photograph: Forensic Architecture/Forensis
Many descendants also fear that the Hyphen project could undermine efforts to preserve Namibia’s sites of the genocide as places of remembrance. Sima Luipert, adviser to the Nama Traditional Leaders Association (NTLA) and a collaborator on the exhibition, fears the port expansion could disturb burial grounds. “When they dredge, they don’t seem to realise that they are not simply moving dirt. They are disturbing the dead,” she says. “The water is the burial site.”
Germany refuses to pay reparations to Herero and Nama descendants, offering instead development aid payments negotiated with the Namibian government. When Germany formally recognised the atrocities in 2021, it described them as a genocide “from today’s perspective” – a formulation critics say avoids the legal and political implications of recognition. By that logic, no act committed before the 1948 genocide convention could fully qualify as such.
To Luipert, the agreement reflects a glaring double standard. “Germany can swiftly compensate victims of the Holocaust while invoking strict legal technicalities to deny reparations to Africans,” she says. To her, the show is a way to provide evidence – “a digital shield against historical denial”.
In recent years, Forensic Architecture’s work has divided opinion. Critics see its work as persuasive visualisations built on evidence that can be ambiguous; supporters argue the collective has pioneered new ways of exposing structures of violence that might otherwise remain hidden or obscured.
In the works presented in Berlin, transparency about methodology is central. This is perhaps most convincing in a film on the Hornkranz massacre of 1893, when German colonial troops under Curt von François attacked the settlement of Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi, killing dozens of civilians. Drawing on oral histories, photographs and in-depth analysis of changes in the landscape, the film reconstructs an atrocity largely absent from German collective memory.
The film’s process of reconstruction is visible throughout the exhibition space. Historical drawings, maps and a letter by Von François are displayed alongside digital models that imagine how the village might have looked before the massacre.
Evidence of a massacre: spent cartridges at Horncranz, dating back to 1893. Photograph: Forensic Architecture/Forensis
Mark Mushiba, the lead curator of Fractured Lifeworlds and a researcher at Forensis, explains that historians have largely relied on colonial documents. Forensic Architecture and Forensis instead sought to “read the landscape”. In Hornkranz – which is now used as a private farm – that meant locating old bullet cartridges, identifying former homesteads through distinctive vegetation patterns and treating plants as historical evidence. “We were absolutely shocked by the lack of physical investigation that was done here,” Mushiba says.
Forensic Architecture founder Eyal Weizman describes their approach in Namibia as a form of “forensic botany”. With Forensis, the research agency analysed shades of grey in colonial photographs to infer patterns of grass density, and combined these findings with other sources to reconstruct the erasure of local communities. The aim is to recover a record inscribed in the landscape. In Weizman’s words, the show is about finding ways to “send a satellite back in time”.
This approach is mirrored in a work titled Satellite Images of Hatsamas, consisting of three digital prints in flashy red and green tones. Combining local knowledge, historical photographs and modern satellite data, the prints aim to visualise changes in vegetation over 150 years. The result will show how colonial settlement has shaped the land, leading to bush encroachment and desertification.
Contemporary artworks add a further layer to the show. Tuli Mekondjo contributes an embroidered Herero uniform titled Schutztruppe. Originally worn by German colonial soldiers, the garment was adopted by Herero communities as an act of resistance and commemoration. By stitching a human skeleton on to the fabric, Mekondjo transforms it into a wearable memorial for prisoners who died on Shark Island.
In speaking about the exhibition, Weizman repeatedly returns to the relationship between genocide and the desert: from the forced marches of Armenians into the Syrian desert to Gaza, where widespread destruction has transformed much of the territory into flattened terrain. Fractured Lifeworlds shows how colonial violence leaves traces in the land. As Germany continues to debate the meaning and scope of its memory culture, this exhibition is a timely reminder that the past remains part of the present.
