Belgium Apologizes for Kidnapping Children From African Colonies

[Kind of Blue]

BRUSSELS — Belgium apologized on Thursday for the kidnapping, segregation, deportation and forced adoption of thousands of children born to mixed-race couples during its colonial rule of Burundi, Congo and Rwanda.

The apology is the first time that Belgium has recognized any responsibility for what historians say was the immense harm the country inflicted on the Central African nations, which it colonized for eight decades. Prime Minister Charles Michel offered the apology on Thursday afternoon in front of a plenary session of Parliament, which was attended by dozens of people of mixed race in the visitors gallery.

Over the past year, Belgium has taken a number of steps to reassess its colonial past. The apologies also come at a time when politicians across Europe are under pressure from a growing African diaspora and a younger generation that wishes to shed a new light on colonial history in order to tackle latent racism and discrimination in European society.

Some experts on colonial history noted that Belgium’s apology came late — nearly 60 years after the three countries gained independence.

Many white Belgian men, nevertheless, married black Congolese women according to local customs, producing children sometimes called métis. But in the eyes of Belgium, these children undermined official segregation policies and blemished the white race’s prestige, official documents from that time show.

Visitors at Mr. Michel’s speech to Parliament in Brussels. Dozens of mixed-race people were among those in attendance.

Fearing a repeat of the Red River Rebellion in Canada in 1869-1870, when métis people revolted and overthrew the local government, the Belgian authorities ordered métis children in Congo to be separated from their families, and from the black population as a whole.

“Children born out of parents of mixed color during colonial times were always considered as a threat to the colonial enterprise, to profits and to the prestige and the domination of the white race,” said Assumani Budagwa, 65, a Belgian engineer and amateur historian who was born in colonial Congo and whose family experienced the separation of mixed-race children.

Mr. Budagwa was a co-author of a Parliamentary resolution that was unanimously adopted last year urging the government to apologize and recognizing Belgium’s misdeeds regarding the mixed-race children with the complicity of the Roman Catholic Church.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/world/europe/belgium-kidnapping-congo-rwanda-burundi.html

[malaise]

1. Fuck all the colonial powers

They'd do it again in a heartbeat

[Kind of Blue]

2. Indeed! I'd like to see a lot of the billions, if not trillions

of dollars go back to the people.

Pay up or shut up instead of the "putting some resources" into communities.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. And as most people know, hopefully, the US of A practiced and is STILL practicing the same thing

a horrendous history of killing as many indigenous males as possible, kidnapping children under 10 and forcing them to live in white run schools.
children over 10 were considered adults, and killed along with other adults.
Not only was this done to the American Indians, but also to the natives of the Philippines and Hawaii. Government sponsored genocide.

EXACTLY what Trump is doing now to immigrants, except adults are being locked up and forcibly sent out of the country while people like Devos run massively profitable adoption centers where they sell the kids, and no, I am not making this up.

I so heartily recommend James Bradley's The Imperial Cruise. Not a happy read, but essential to our knowledge of hidden history.

The book concerns the 1905 diplomatic mission led by then-Secretary of War William Howard Taft and Alice Roosevelt, as well as the larger implications of President Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy, particularly with regard to Japan. The New York Times wrote that "The Imperial Cruise is startling enough to reshape conventional wisdom about Roosevelt’s presidency."

The book exposes the blatantly racist and exploitative policy of the United States in its attempt to extend its influence into the Pacific rim, acquiring Hawaii by conquest and the Philippines by purchase from the Spanish after ostensibly having entered the conflict to aid the Filipino freedom fighters. The American occupation was marked by torture and repression of the very people they had come to help.

https://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/14-non-fiction/7875-imperial-cruise-bradley?start=1

[malaise]

4. I agree with you

This shit is still going on - they are kidnapping these children for sale - adoption is the new term.

That said the British, French, Spanish and Portuguese had their monsters in this hemisphere long before the Monroe doctrine.

[Kind of Blue]

5. +1000

It's overwhelming and I can't even respond properly.

Thanks for recommending The Imperial Cause and for the link.