"Monetary payment of a colonial debt, in light of Belgium's moral responsibility". This is one of the strong recommendations in an expert report published on October 27. For a year, ten historians, jurists and political scientists have been working to provide the Special Commission on the Colonial Past with a situational analysis. Other avenues are also being explored, including the restitution of looted objects.
The long-awaited report appeared on the website of the House of Representatives on October 27, following a brief announcement on Twitter by the chairman of the Special Commission on the Colonial Past, Wouter De Vriendt.
This work, while essential, is only the beginning. "The purpose of this report is not to make decisions but to inform the decisions that will fall to the Special Commission," write the experts. "The analysis produced here is the antithesis of a report to close the debate. On the contrary, it is intended to open up perspectives and, we hope, provide some useful tools to help build a just society [... ]". These researchers and professors also stress the hope that this project has raised, noting that it is "the first initiative of a former colonial power to face up to its entire colonial past and explicitly question the links between colonialism and racism".
Undeniable systemic violence
Their 689-page report falls into three parts. The first, about 400 pages long, is devoted to the history of Belgian colonization in the Congo, and, in a less documented way, in Rwanda and Burundi. The aim is to identify points of colonial history on which research is still needed to substantiate certain facts. But some facts, notably the violent exploitation of human labour, are undeniable.
"Exploitation and violence are systemic features of colonialism, not incidental by-products of it," the experts assert. "The idea that the worst excesses of colonial violence under Leopold II's regime were the work of marginal and isolated individuals is not consistent with current research findings, which reveal multiple regimes of terror and violent extortion combined with frequent impunity for their perpetrators. Rather than being accidental, this reign of terror served the purpose of exploiting Congo's resources. Systemic violence did not end with the takeover of the Congo from Leopold II by the Belgian state. This idea was peddled by the efficient propaganda machine of the Belgian Congo. It conceals the oppression, forced labour and other forms of violence that continued to characterize colonial rule in the Belgian Congo." As for racism, "it was a structural feature of colonialism, embedded in political, legal, social, cultural, religious and knowledge structures, with ongoing effects".
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