The Brussels Court of Appeal found the Belgian government guilty of crimes against humanity, related to the kidnapping of five women from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
These women are Simone Ngalula, Monique Bintu Bingi, Léa Tavares Mujinga, Noëlle Verbeeken and Maria-José Loshi.
They were born to Congolese who were impregnated by Belgians during the colonial period.
Simone and her friends explained that they were kidnapped by the Belgians between 1948 and 1961 when they were still children, and taken to Christian institutions in Brussels, supposedly to receive a European education.
It turned out that the Belgian government did not want the Congolese born of whites and blacks to stay in the DRC, because it was worried that they might become intelligent and destroy their colonialism.
Another fear of the Belgian government was that the Congolese might confuse Belgians of mixed skin with those of mixed skin (Métisses), treating them all as powerful.
In 2021, Simone and four of her colleagues took the Belgian government to the Brussels court, asking them to confirm that separating them from their parents is a crime against humanity, but it has been criticized, meaning that it is not based on a crime that did not exist during the colonial period.
On September 9, 2024, they filed an appeal, explaining that what shows that this crime happened is that the International Criminal Court of Nuremberg was the one that convicted the former Nazi regime.
On December 2, 2024, the Court of Appeals confirmed that the Congolese was the victim of a crime against humanity, based on the way they were separated from their parents.
This court recalled that Belgium is one of the countries in the United Nations that has signed the agreement governing the operation of the Nuremberg Tribunal, so that the crimes tried by it should also be tried.
Lawyer Michele Hirsch, who defended the women in the case, declared that the decision is a historic victory because it is the first time the country has been convicted of such crimes related to the colonial era.
“It is a victory and a historic case,” said Mr. Hirsch.
It is the first time in Belgium, and possibly in all of Europe, that a court has convicted the Belgian state of crimes against humanity committed during the colonial period.
The Court of Appeal ordered the Belgian government to pay each of the women 50,000 euros in compensation for separating them from their parents and family, and to each of them 1 million euros, equivalent to what they lost during the trial.
