Belgium Court orders government to pay reparations for colonial kidnappings
Now in their 70s, the women were taken from their mothers as young children under a state policy and placed in orphanages.
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A Belgian court has ruled that the government must pay reparations to five mixed-race women who were forcibly separated from their families during the colonial era in the Belgian Congo.
Now in their 70s, the women were taken from their mothers as young children under a state policy and placed in orphanages. The court determined that the government had orchestrated a systematic plan to identify and abduct children born to Black mothers and white fathers.
On Monday, the judges declared these actions a crime against humanity, describing the abductions as "an inhumane act of persecution."
In 2019, the Belgian government issued a formal apology to an estimated 20,000 individuals who were victims of forced family separations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi during the colonial era.
The DRC was under Belgian colonial rule from 1908 until its independence in 1960.
The five women—Monique Bitu Bingi, Léa Tavares Mujinga, Noëlle Verbeken, Simone Ngalula, and Marie-José Loshi—filed a legal claim for compensation in 2021. The state took them before the age of seven and placed them in orphanages, many of which were run by the Catholic Church.
Reflecting on her experience, Bitu Bingi told AFP, "We were destroyed. Apologies are easy, but when you do something, you have to take responsibility for it."
Their case succeeded in the Brussels Court of Appeal, which overturned a previous ruling that dismissed their claim due to the amount of time that had passed. The court removed any statute of limitations by classifying the state’s actions as a crime against humanity.
The judges ordered the Belgian state to compensate the women for the emotional harm caused by losing their mothers and their connection to their cultural identity and environment.
The women had initially requested €50,000 (£41,400) each in reparations.
This landmark case is the first in Belgium to spotlight the plight of an estimated 20,000 mixed-race children born to white settlers and black women who were forcibly separated from their families in the 1940s and 1950s.
Many of these children were not acknowledged by their white fathers and were denied Belgian nationality. They were placed in state care and often endured further abuse in church-run orphanages.
The Catholic Church apologized for its role in the scandal in 2017. Two years later, the Belgian government followed with its own apology, calling it a step towards recognizing and acknowledging this dark chapter of the nation’s history.