A Belgian court has mandated that the government compensate five mixed-race women who were taken from their families during the Belgian Congo’s colonial era.
According to governmental policy, the ladies, who are now in their 70s, were removed from their mothers when they were young and placed in orphanages.
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According to the court, the government had a “plan to systematically search for and abduct children born to a black mother and a white father”.
Judges recently referred to the kidnappings as “an inhumane act of persecution” and declared them to be a crime against humanity.
In 2019, the Belgian government formally apologized to an estimated 20,000 people who had been forced to leave their families in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Belgium ruled the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a colony from 1908 until 1960.
In 2021, Monique Bitu Bingi, Léa Tavares Mujinga, Noëlle Verbeken, Simone Ngalula, and Marie-José Loshi filed a lawsuit seeking damages.
Before the age of seven, the authorities took them all and placed them in orphanages run mostly by the Catholic Church.
Bitu Bingi had already informed a news agency, “We were destroyed. Apologies are easy, but when you do something you have to take responsibility for it.”
Their legal battle paid off on Monday when the Brussels Court of Appeal reversed a previous court decision that determined they were ineligible for restitution because too much time had gone.
Any statute of limitations was eliminated when the court declared the state’s acts to be a crime against humanity.
“The court orders the Belgian State to compensate the appellants for the moral damage resulting from the loss of their connection to their mother and the damage to their identity and their connection to their original environment,” the judges noted.
The women had requested a €50,000 (£41,400) down payment. This is the first instance in Belgium to draw attention to the estimated 20,000 children born to local black women and white settlers who were taken from their families by force in the 1940s and 1950s.
The children did not immediately acquire Belgian nationality, and the majority of white men declined to accept paternity or acknowledge their mixed-race offspring.
As a result, they were placed in state custody and were subjected to more torture in orphanages administered by the Church.
For its role in the incident, the Catholic church expressed regret to the victims in 2017.
To “address and acknowledge this aspect of our national history,” the Belgian government also expressed regret for its role in 2019.
