The Brussels Court of Appeal on Monday condemned the Belgian state for the forced placement in institutions of five mixed-race girls in Congo before independence in 1960, finding that their “kidnapping” from their mothers constituted “a crime against humanity”.
The appeals court overturned the 2021 trial judgment.”The appellants' civil claim based on this crime is not time-barred“, et “the Belgian State is ordered to compensate the moral damage” of the five women now in their seventies, specifies a press release from the court.
This trial was the first in Belgium to highlight the fate reserved for mixed race people born in the former Belgian colonies (Congo, Rwanda, Burundi), whose number is generally estimated at around 15,000. Most of them were not recognized by their fathers, and should not mix with whites or Africans.
“We won“, reacted Michèle Hirsch, the plaintiffs' lawyer. The five plaintiffs Léa, Monique, Noëlle, Simone and Marie-José were all born between 1945 and 1950 from the relationship of a white man with a black woman in the former -Belgian colony, today the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
At the age of two, three or four, they were forcibly taken from their maternal families and placed in religious institutions, where they say they were victims of mistreatment.
Taken from their respective mothers, without her consent, before the age of seven, by the Belgian state
According to their defense, the practice fell under “the policy of racial segregation and kidnappings established by the colonial state“, and was accompanied by “identity theft“of these children.”The mixed race people were excluded because they endangered the colony (…) Their quest for identity is still prevented to this day“, Mr. Hirsch said at the hearing in September.
On Monday, the Brussels Court of Appeal noted that the five complainants had been “kidnapped from their respective mothers, without her consent, before the age of seven, by the Belgian State in execution of a systematic search and kidnapping plan“targeting mixed race children”only because of their origins“.
Compensation
“Their kidnapping is an inhumane act of persecution constituting a crime against humanity under the principles of international law recognized by the Statute of the Nuremberg Tribunal, integrated into international law“, it is underlined. The judgment cites a UN resolution confirming these legal principles adopted in December 1946.
“The court orders the Belgian State to compensate the appellants for the moral damage resulting from the loss of their link to their mother and the attack on their identity and their link to their original environment.“, the press release further indicates.
Belgian state courthouse condemned Congo children colonization
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