Brutal colonial past colours Belgian king's DRC visit

As Belgium’s King Albert II attends the DRC's 50th anniversary celebrations, rights campaigners are pointing the finger at his country's - and his family's - controversial record as the former colonial power. Half a century after independence, Belgium has still to come to terms with the legacy of the harsh treatment of the colony through the end of the 19th century and its involvement in the assassination of independence hero Patrice Lumumba.

Reuters

King Leopold II, who ruled Belgium at the end of the 19th century, was known for his harsh treatment of the Belgian Congo, from which he amassed a considerable personal fortune.

He was the founder and owner of the Congo Free State, a one-man holding company that exploited labourers to harvest rubber and extract ivory from the colony. The king was forced to relinquish control to the Belgian government in 1908.

Historians such as Adam Hothschild, author of King Leopold's Ghosts, say that Leopold used forced labour, taking women hostage to ensure that men did not run away from rubber plantations, and was responsible for the death of eight to 10 million Congolese.

The brutality inspired US writer Mark Twain to write a famous satirical broadside, King Leopold's Soliloquy.

Two generations later, King Baudoin in his farewell speech to the colony, praised the “genius” of Belgium’s colonialism.

Last week, liberal MEP Louis Michel, a former foreign minister and the EU’s development and foreign aid commissioner until last year, defended Belgium’s legacy in the Congo.

“Leopold II does not deserve such criticism,” he told a Belgian magazine. “The Belgians created a framework, schools, hospitals and put in place economic growth.”

He dismissed descriptions of the colony as a work camp, saying “that was simply the way it was done”, adding, "...  we cannot deny – civilisation arrived.”

And the controversy is not just from the 19th century. Patrice Lumumba, the DRC’s first post-independence prime minister, was deposed in a coup just 10 weeks after he was elected. He was imprisoned, and eventually executed by a firing squad in 1961.

A team of lawyers from Belgium, Germany and the US representing Lumumba’s three sons are preparing a case against former Belgian civil servants, alleging their involvement in Lumumba’s death. They are basing their case on a 2001 Belgian parliamentary commission that concluded that Belgium was morally responsible for the assassination.

The complaint will be filed in October against 12 former civil servants in the Belgian colonial administration.

With the tortured history as backdrop, some see the presence of King Albert I at the independence celebrations as a slap in the face. It is no surprise that His Majesty will not make any speeches while in Kinshasa.