This is over a month old, but I had to talk about it. Of all the apologies I expected, I did not expect this one: Belgium apologizes for the abduction of mixed-race children in Congo. Seriously? Do not get me wrong… this is a step forward… but what about the 14-million-people genocide committed by the Belgian king, Leopold II (King Leopold II and The Congolese Genocide)? What about the millions of amputees over several decades? Now Belgium apologizes for the kidnapping of thousands of mixed-race children which happened over 3 years right before and after the independence of Congo, i.e. their very own children with local women … Isn’t that normal? What about the Congolese? So the only time Belgium apologizes about Africa is for their ‘own’ children… what about the genocide? what about the maiming? the rape (we know it was not all consensual)? the imperialism? and the subsequent wars funded by them in Congo? Given that Belgium were recently forced by the UN to apologize, they decided to apologize for kidnapping their very own children! Do they expect us to clap for them? Maybe this is a way to boost up the Belgian population which is in decline (like everywhere in Europe), and again separate these already separated children from their origins.  The excerpt below is from BBC; for the full article, follow the link.

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Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has apologised for the kidnapping of thousands of children born to mixed-race couples during colonial rule in Burundi, DR Congo and Rwanda.

The “métis” children born to Belgian settlers and local women were forcibly taken to Belgium and fostered by Catholic orders and other institutions.

About 20,000 children are believed to have been affected. Most fathers refused to acknowledge the paternity of their children.

The children were born in the 1940s and 1950s and taken to Belgium from 1959 until the independence [a little after, 1962] of each of the three colonies.

Some of the children never received Belgian nationality and remained stateless.

Speaking in the Belgian parliament, Mr Michel said the country had breached the children’s basic human rights, seeing them as a threat to the colonial system.

It had, he said, stripped them of their identity, stigmatised them and split up siblings.

[…] The groups miXed2020 and Métis de Belgique say many of the kidnapped children “suffered deeply” as a result of their experience.

Many still had no access to birth records and remained unable to find their mothers or their Belgian fathers, who, the groups said, were often well-known figures.

[…] Last month, the UN’s Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent told Belgium to apologise for atrocities committed during its colonial era.