Namibia's island of death: Shark Island, off Namibia's coastal town of Luderitz, was the venue of a brutal concentration camp during German colonial rule. Casper W. Erichsen, an alumnus of the University of Namibia, writes about an island of suffering and death.(Feature)

Between 1904 and 1908 a series of wars were fought by the indigenous people of Namibia against German colonial forces. The most famous was waged by the united Herero nation, the occupants of central Namibia, who in the initial battles and skirmishes defeated the German colonial army. However, Kaiser Wilhelm II soon sent reinforcements from Berlin and at the end of the war in 1908, the Herero nation was all but destroyed: socially, culturally; economically, psychologically and physically. Over 80% of Herero men, women and children were wiped out.

Many southern Namibian communities suffered the same fate when they took up arms against the Germans in 1905. In fact, only 50% of the Nama people of the south were still alive after the war.

There is, however, another aspect of the Namibian genocide that has remained almost entirely forgotten in the years that have passed since 1904-08.

Following the defeat of the Herero, the German army set up five internment camps for "prisoners-of-war", strategically placed around the colony. The concept was borrowed from South Africa, where only a few years earlier the British had been responsible for thousands of deaths, using concentration camps in the Boer War.

As such the new German camps were called Konzentrationslagern and throughout the colony the scattered members of the defeated Herero nation were rounded up and sent to these camps. Original files of the German Colonial Administration, now kept in the National Archives of Namibia, reveal this sinister chapter of Namibia's violent heritage.

Enter Shark Island. In the far south of Namibia lies the coastal town of Luderitz. The town is famous for being the bridgehead of German colonialism and the discovery of diamonds in 1908.

Flanked by…