Belgium loses case over babies stolen in former colonies

Belgium must pay restitution to five women who were forcibly taken from their mothers and placed in orphanages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo when it was still a Belgian colony, a court ordered on Monday.

The Court of Appeals in Brussels overturned an earlier decision by another court that too much time had elapsed for the state to be charged.

The appellate judges ruled that although the abductions happened 70 years ago, they constituted crimes against humanity and were, therefore, not subject to statutes of limitations.

"The court orders the Belgian state to compensate the appellants for the moral damage resulting from the loss of their connection to their mother and the damage to their identity and their connection to their original environment," the judgment read.

It said that Belgium had carried on "an inhumane act of persecution."

What do we know about the plaintiffs?

The five women at the center of the case are Simone Ngalula, Monique Bitu Bingi, Lea Tavares Mujinga, Noelle Verbeeken and Marie-Jose Loshi.

They were all born between 1946 and 1950. Belgium controlled the territory that is today the DRC from 1908 to 1960 and Burundi and Rwanda from 1922 to 1962.

In an interview with The Guardian, Monique Bitu Bingi recalled a white man visiting her birth village, and her family being told they had to bring her to a Christian mission a three-days' journey away.

"I cried and cried, but there was no one," she recalled to the news outlet about that day in 1953.

Case a historical first

The case was the first to shed light on the fate of children born to one Black parent and one white parent during Belgium's colonization of Africa.

The children, mostly born to African mothers and white fathers, were not allowed to be recognized by their fathers or mix in white society.

Their mothers were forced to place them in orphanages in what is today Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The five women at the center of case say they were brought to Catholic institutions where they lived until Belgium abandoned its colonial holdings to independence movements, after which they were abandoned.

As precise records were not kept, it is impossible to say how many children were affected but experts believe it to be somewhere near 15,000.

The Court of Appeals called the crimes "a plan to systematically search for and abduct children born to a Black mother and a white father."

es/zc (AFP, dpa)