They are known as the métis,the mestizos.They are the babies born as a result of the relationship between women from Belgium’s colonies in Africa last century and men of Belgian nationality who were systematically forcibly separated from their mothers and placed in orphanages. A practice organized by the Belgian colonial authorities in Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, with the approval of the Catholic Church, which the Brussels Court of Appeal described this Monday as a non-prescribed crime against humanity, forcing the State to compensate to five mestizo women who have been litigating their case for years.
The plaintiffs are five women born between 1945 and 1950 in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo and was then a colony of Belgium (it became independent in 1960) who were forcibly separated from their mothers while still children (they were no more than four years) and placed in religious institutions, where they suffered mistreatment. His lawyer, Michèle Hirsch, has described the sentence as “historic” for being “the first time that a colonial State has been convicted of a crime committed during colonization, classified as a crime against humanity declared not prescribed.”
It is estimated that up to 15,000 mixed-race children in the former Belgian colonies of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda, most never recognized by their Belgian parents, were forcibly separated from their maternal families and placed in orphanages. Colony officials received instructions to organize the separation of children born from a mixed union, forcing mothers to separate from their children, who were placed in Catholic institutions. The separation was carried out by force, through threats or traps, given that the children had not been abandoned nor were they orphans, the newspaper highlights. Le Soir.
The legal representation of the plaintiffs had denounced during the hearings held in September that this practice constitutes a “policy of racial segregation and abductions established by the colonial State” that resulted in “identity theft” of the affected minors. “The mestizos were rejected because they endangered the colony. (…) Until today they have been prevented from searching for their identity,” argued their lawyer, according to the radio station RTL.
The Belgian State apologized in 2018
In 2018, the then Belgian Prime Minister, Charles Michel, apologized on behalf of the State for the segregation of mixed-race children in Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. The five women who must now be compensated with up to 50,000 euros for moral damages considered that this step was not enough and filed a lawsuit to demand compensation for the suffering suffered. A lower court rejected their arguments, but appeal judges have now sided with them.
The court considers it proven that the plaintiffs were “separated from their mothers, without their consent,” within the framework of the execution by the Belgian colonial authorities of “a systematic search and removal plan” of the mixed-race children “only because of his biracial origin.
It was an “inhuman and persecutory act, constituting a crime against humanity by virtue of the principles of international law recognized by the Statute of the Nuremberg Tribunal, integrated into international law,” the ruling states. Therefore, he adds, the Belgian State must compensate the plaintiffs for the “moral damage resulting from the loss of the bond with their mother and the attack on their identity and place of origin.”
