Country becomes the first European nation ordered to pay compensation to victims of colonization
A Belgian court rejected this Friday an appeal by the Belgian State against the sentence that condemned the country for crimes against humanity and the payment of compensation for crimes committed during the colonial period.
Specifically, Belgium was accused by five people of racial segregation and forced separation of mixed-race children during the time it held the colony of Congo.
The five complainants, born between 1946 and 1950 in Congo – now the Democratic Republic of Congo – and, in all cases, daughters of a Belgian settler and a Congolese mother, were torn from their families and later taken to orphanages, a common practice with children of mixed race at the time when the Central African country was a Belgian colony.
Due to the decision taken this Friday by the Belgian court of appeal, Belgium officially becomes a state guilty of the aforementioned crimes and is the first European nation condemned to pay compensation to victims of colonization.
Belgium must now compensate the victims for the moral damages resulting from “the loss of the bond with their mother and the attack on their identity and their connection with their home environment”.
Although the local press did not disclose the amount with which they will be compensated, the plaintiffs’ lawyers requested compensation of 50,000 euros for each of them, in addition to payment of the costs of the case.
The five women who took the case to Belgian justice represent just a small part of the 20,000 children estimated to have been victims of the same crimes during the colonial period.
