Five women born in the former Belgian Congo who were taken away from their Black mothers have filed a lawsuit for crimes against humanity targeting the Belgian state.
A statue of Belgium's King Leopold II is smeared with red paint and graffiti in Brussels, Wednesday, June 10, 2020. With the protests sweeping the world in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, King Leopold II is now increasingly seen as a stain on the nation as demonstrators demand he disappear from public view and authorities take heed. Statues of the late king have defaced in at least a half dozen cities across Belgium.
“This systematic policy of racially motivated abduction is a crime against humanity,” Michele Hirsch, a lawyer for the women, told The Associated Press on Friday. “It is not enough to say: ‘We apologize.’ Reality has to be taken into account. Their lives have been shattered." Hirsch said the five women — four who now live in Belgium and one in France — were aged between 2 and 4 when they were taken away at the request of the Belgian colonial administration, in cooperation with the local Catholic church authorities.According to the legal documents, in all five cases the fathers did not exercise parental authority and the Belgian administration threatened the children’s Congolese families with reprisals if they refused to let them go.
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