Five mixed-race women demanding reparations from Belgium after being taken from their mothers in Congo 70 years ago took their fight to a Brussels appeals court Monday. The women accuse the country of crimes against humanity over a colonial-era practice that saw them taken from their families and placed in institutions.
The complaint covers the period 1948-1961 and concerns the entire policy of placing mixed-race children in religious institutions managed by the Church, but which in fact resulted from a racial policy instaurated by the Belgian colonial administration in the Congo.
The five women - now in their 70s - accuse Belgium of crimes against humanity in their native Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
They want justice, compensation, and the recognition of these crimes.
The Belgian authorities recognise that between 14,000 and 20,000 children are involved in this case, but, despite their considerable number, their fate has long been ignored, according to RFI's correspondent in Brussels.
In 2021, the judges rejected the motivation brought by the five plaintiffs, saying: "No one can be punished for a crime that did not exist at the time of the alleged facts".
The women appealed the decision and a new trial opened on Monday.
Colonial policy
At the time, Belgium had claimed that the placements of these mixed-race children were meant to give them a so-called "European" education, in order to create a caste of Congolese people who were favorable to the colonial regime.
But in reality, a concerted policy to tear these children, called "mulattoes," from their mothers (even if their father had not recognised them) was put into place, and to make them somehow invisible, because their very existence challenged the racial supremacy of the colonial order.
These children were marginalised from both African and colonial society.
The plaintiffs' lawyers will argue on appeal that this was in fact a crime against humanity even then - and that the same principles that the Nuremberg Tribunal used for crimes against humanity against the Nazi regime should be applied to post-war colonial policy.
"They were abducted, mistreated, ignored, expelled from the world. They are living proof of an unacknowledged state crime," the lawyers said in 2021.
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Accept Manage my choices 'Deep regrets'
In 2019, Belgium apologised for kidnapping these thousands of mixed-race children in the DRC between 1959 and 1962, in a move to address the legacy of its often brutal 80 years of colonisation.
"In the name of the federal government, I present my apologies to the metis of the Belgian colonial era and their families for the injustices and the sufferings they have endured," Prime Minister Charles Michel told Parliament as dozens of former abductees looked on.
The apology was the first time Belgium officially acknowledged responsibility for the policy of segregation under which 'metis' children were abducted from Congo and put in schools and orphanages in Belgium run by the Catholic Church.
In 2022, Belgium's King Philippe also expressed his "deepest regrets" for the pain inflicted during his country's colonisation of the DRC, but he stopped short of formally apologising for exploitation, racism and acts of violence.
Belgium's King Philippe 'regrets' colonial-era abuses in DRC
"Even though many Belgians were sincerely committed to loving the Congo and its people deeply, the colonial regime was based on exploitation and domination," he said, during a first visit to Congo since taking the throne in 2013.
Many want the King to go a step further.
"We were expecting reparations," said opposition MP Geneviève Inagosi.
"I think Congo's money also built Belgium. Logically, we are expecting Belgium to use its power to rebuild the DRC. Just expressing regrets and saying that we are turning the page is too easy."
