28 May Tanzania AG went to the movies and saw "The Empty Tomb" (Abaton)
On Wednesday, May 22 - the same day the "DIGGAHH.OPEN AIR." opened at the Altona Museum - some people from the "AG-Tansania-Park" met at the Abaton Cinema to watch the documentary "The Empty Tomb" from 2024 together.
It tells the story of the village of Songea in southern Tanzania and the suffering of its inhabitants, which began more than 100 years ago and continues to this day. In 1905, the indigenous population in the south of what was then German East Africa rose up against the unspeakable coercive measures of the German colonial occupation in the so-called "Maji-Maji Uprising". This was violently suppressed in a war that lasted 2 years. In the village of Songea alone, almost 70 rebels, including 6 members of the Nduna Songea Mbano family, were hanged in front of everyone. Their heads were then cut off and - as so often happened - taken to Germany for "research purposes", among other things. Thousands of skulls are still stored in the archives of German and European museums today. However, the descendants of the murdered people cannot - according to tradition - begin their mourning, let alone complete it, as long as the graves are incomplete and the ancestors cannot find peace.
The film accompanies John Mbano and Celine Mollel, a married couple from Songea, and the family of Ernest Daniel Kaaya from Meru on Kilimanjaro on their search for the skulls of their great-grandfathers. Supported by the activist Mnjaka Sururu Mboro and the initiative "Berlin Postkolonial", they meet the Minister of State of the Federal Foreign Office Katja Keul in Berlin, who is very concerned about their request, and they visit the archaeological center of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, where they are very considerately granted access to the collection. However, Celune and John have not found their great-grandfather, despite a DNA test. It must have been upsetting for them to discover that looted art treasures, as well as human skulls, were stored in the depot, which were supposed to be in the graves of their ancestors to give the dead the eternal peace they longed for and finally allow their descendants to mourn. To this day, however, they have not been returned.
After the screening, the two directors Cece Mlay and Agnes Lisa Wegner took part in the discussion.
I was very moved by the film because, beyond all academic rhetoric or depictions of violence, it brought us very close to the people, free of voyeurism, and made us experience the full extent of their suffering - even today after more than 100 years.
If you want to understand why restitution is important and necessary and long overdue, then this film will help.
From Christiane Stascheit