Crime against humanity: Why did a court find Belgium guilty of kidnapping? | News about crimes against humanity

A court has ordered Belgium to pay millions of dollars in compensation to five mixed-race women who were forcibly removed from their homes in the Belgian Congo as children under a colonial-era practice that judges called a “crime against.” humanity.”

Monday’s landmark ruling by the Brussels Court of Appeal came after years of legal battle by aggrieved women. It sets a historical precedent for state-sanctioned kidnappings in which thousands of children were abducted from the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo due to their racial makeup.

A previous lower court ruling in 2021 rejected the women’s claims.

However, the Court of Appeal on Monday ordered the Belgian State “to compensate the appellants for the moral damage resulting from the loss of their connection with their mothers and the damage to their identity and their connection to their original environment.” The five women will receive 250,000 euros ($267,000) together.

Monique Bitu Bingi (71), one of the women who brought the case in 2020, told Al Jazeera that she was satisfied with the ruling.

“I am very happy that justice has finally been given to us,” he said. “And I’m happy that this has been called a crime against humanity.”

Here’s what you should know about the case and why the court ruling is historic:

Why were the women kidnapped?

The five plaintiffs, including Bitu Bingi, were among the estimated 5,000 to 20,000 mixed-race children who were taken from their mothers in the former Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and forcibly taken to distant cities or, in some cases, sent to Belgium for adoption.

After the violent government of King Leopold II, which caused the death and mutilation of millions of Congolese, the Belgian State took over the occupation and continued to apply an immensely exploitative system in the colony between 1908 and 1960.

Belgium also controlled the then Ruanda-Urundi, or present-day Rwanda and Burundi, where hundreds, if not thousands, of mixed-race children were also taken.

Now called Metis, a French term meaning “mixed,” the children were abducted between 1948 and 1961, in the run-up to Congo’s independence.

Belgian colonial authorities believed that biracial children threatened the white supremacy narrative they had continually pushed and used to justify colonialism, experts say.

“They were feared because their very existence was shaking the very foundations of this racial theory that was at the center of the colonial project,” Delphine Lauwers, an archivist and historian at the Belgian State Archives, told Al Jazeera.

Authorities systematically discriminated against children and referred to them as “children of sin.” While white Belgian men were not legally allowed to marry African women, such interracial unions did exist. Some children were also born to women as a result of rape, in situations where African housewives were treated as concubines.

The Catholic missions were key to the kidnappings. From an early age, biracial children were taken or forcibly separated from their mothers and sent to orphanages or missionaries, some in the Congo or Belgium. The state justified the practice based on a colonial-era law that permitted the confinement of biracial children in state or religious institutions.

Some of the Belgian fathers refused to acknowledge paternity – because they came from supposedly respectable homes – and so, in many cases, the children were declared orphans or without known fathers.

The colonial authorities also changed the children’s names, first so that they would not affect their father’s reputation and also so that the children could not connect with their relatives. It was not until 1959, when the three colonies were about to achieve independence, that the kidnapping and shipping of children from the region began to decrease.

In Belgium, some of the children were not accepted due to their mixed origin. Some never received Belgian nationality and became stateless. The Métis say they were long treated as third-class citizens in Belgium. Most of those affected still cannot access their birth records or find their parents.

Has Belgium apologized for the kidnappings?

In March 2018, the Belgian parliament passed a resolution recognizing that there had been a policy of selective segregation and forced abductions of mixed-race children in former Belgian colonies, and that reparation was necessary.

Lawmakers ordered the Belgian state to investigate what means of reparation would be proportionate for African mothers who had had their children stolen and for biracial children who had suffered lifelong harm as a result.

A year later, in 2019, then-Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel apologized for the colonial practice, saying Belgium had stripped children of their identity, stigmatized them and divided families.

In his statement, Michel promised that “this solemn moment will represent another step towards awareness and recognition of this part of our national history.”

However, Michel stopped short of naming the crimes of forced kidnapping. Experts say this was because it would have major repercussions for the state, which would be forced to possibly pay reparations to thousands of people.

Although human rights groups pressured Belgium to take the apology a step further, the government did not relent.

What led to the court case?

In 2020, a group of five Métis women, including Bitu Bingi, sued Belgium for crimes against humanity and demanded 50,000 euros ($52,550) each in compensation.

It was historic: the first case of its kind seeking justice for the Métis and forcing Belgium to address a series of atrocities linked to its brutal colonial past in Africa. The other plaintiffs are Lea Tavares Mujinga, Simone Vandenbroecke Ngalula, Noelle Verbeken and Marie Jose Loshi.

The women, who refer to themselves as sisters, also demanded that the state present any documents identifying them, such as letters, telegrams or records, to trace their origins.

They are all between 70 and 80 years old. They were forcibly taken to the same mission in Kasai province as babies, far from their various villages. At the mission, the girls grew close to and lived with other biracial people.

The women said they were treated as outcasts at the mission. They said they did not have enough food and had to collect sweet potato leaves to feed themselves.

When Kasai descended into tribal unrest before the announcement of Congolese independence in 1960, the missionaries abandoned the girls, along with 60 other children, and fled to Belgium.

The new Congolese state ordered fighters from the Bakwa Luntu tribe to guard them. Instead, the men sexually mutilated the girls. Eventually, the women grew up and left, emigrating to France. The trauma, they said, persisted.

“When you take this kind of love away from children, they will carry that scar for the rest of their lives,” Bitu Bingi told Al Jazeera. “It’s something that can’t be healed like other scars.”

In 2021, the processing of the case began. Lawyers representing Belgium argued in hearings before a Brussels civil court that the kidnappings at the time were legal and that the case should have been brought a long time ago. They claimed that too much time had passed.

Attorney Michele Hirsch, who represents the women, responded by saying the trauma was being passed down from one generation to the next. “If you fight for this crime to be recognized, it is for your children, your grandchildren… We ask you to name the crime and condemn the Belgian State,” Hirsch appealed to the judges.

However, in December 2021, the court ruled that the Belgian state was not guilty of crimes against humanity and that the policy had to be seen in the context of European colonialism.

How did the court rule on Monday?

The women immediately appealed the civil court ruling. Subsequent hearings took place between 2022 and 2024.

At appeal hearings, the women again testified about the abuse they had suffered. “The Belgian State uprooted us, separated us from our people. “He stole our childhood, our lives, our names, our surnames, our identities and our human rights,” Lea Tavares Mujinga, one of the plaintiffs, said in court.

Finally, on Monday, December 2, the Court of Appeals issued its ruling.

In its ruling, the court recognized that the Belgian state was responsible for the kidnapping and systematic racial segregation and ordered that the amount requested by each woman be paid.

It is the first such ruling of its kind and experts say it could have implications for other European states that also committed numerous crimes during colonialism, amid strong calls for reparations.

Nicolas Angelet, a second lawyer who represented the women, told Al Jazeera that the ruling could prompt more affected Métis to seek justice in court. A preventive out-of-court settlement for anyone affected by discriminatory colonial-era policies could save some time for both the state and potential claimants, he said.

For now, the legal team is “very happy” with Monday’s ruling, Angelet added, but noted that the Belgian side could still appeal to the Supreme Court.

“It’s not quite over yet,” he said. “But we feel prepared and confident… and we can now enforce this ruling immediately, even if they go to court.”