Belgium ordered to pay reparations for colonial kidnappings in Congo

A Belgium court has ordered the government to pay reparations to five mixed-race women who were forcibly removed from their families in the colonial-era Belgian Congo. The women, now in their 70s, were taken from their mothers when they were young children and placed in orphanages under a state policy. The court said the government had a “plan to systematically search for and abduct children born to a black mother and a white father”. On Monday judges called this a crime against humanity and said the kidnappings were “an inhumane act of persecution”. The Belgium government in 2019 issued a formal apology to an estimated 20,000 victims of forced family separations in DR Congo, as well as Burundi and Rwanda. DR Congo was governed by Belgium as a colony from 1908 to 1960. Monique Bitu Bingi, Léa Tavares Mujinga, Noëlle Verbeken, Simone Ngalula and Marie-José Loshi launched a legal case for compensation in 2021. They were all taken by the state under the age of seven and placed in orphanages mainly managed by the Catholic Church. Bitu Bingi had previously told AFP news agency: “We were destroyed. Apologies are easy, but when you do something you have to take responsibility...