Trial of Métis children against the Belgian state: not a crime against humanity, according to justice

As Le Vif revealed in June 2020, five Métis women had sued the Belgian state for crimes against humanity. Born to Belgian fathers and Congolese mothers, they had been placed in an orphanage. The trial began last October, and the Brussels civil court has just dismissed them.

The Brussels civil court ruled, in a judgment handed down on Wednesday, that the segregation of mixed race children in the Congo was not incriminated as a crime against humanity during the period when Belgium was in charge of this African country. . He thus declared unfounded the action of five women who were victims of this system set up by the Belgian authorities in the Congo.

Five women, born in the Congo between 1946 and 1950, had filed a complaint against the Belgian state for crimes against humanity and had brought a civil liability action before the civil court in Brussels.

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Five women, born in the Congo between 1946 and 1950, had filed a complaint against the Belgian state for crimes against humanity and had brought a civil liability action before the civil court in Brussels. They claimed damages for the significant damage caused, but also the production of archives concerning their origins and their history.

Born from the union of a Belgian and a Congolese, during the period when the Congo was a Belgian colony, they were torn from their homes to be placed in orphanages, like many other Métis children. According to official documents from the colonial archives, provided by the plaintiffs' lawyers, kidnappings of Métis children were organized by officers of the Belgian State and implemented with the help of the Church. Officials of the colonizing state were given instructions to organize the abduction of children from mixed unions, forcing mothers to separate from them .

The children were placed in Catholic missions which were in the territory of the Belgian Congo. From an early age - some were between two and four years old - the half-breeds were thus torn from their mother and their native village by the use of force, threats or deceptive maneuvers when these children were neither abandoned, not forsaken, orphans, or found.

For the court, "these contextual elements do not make it possible to establish that between 1948 and 1961 the policy of placing Métis children in religious institutions for racial reasons was considered by the Community of States as a crime against humanity. and incriminated as such ". He added that "as unacceptable as they are, these actions, even illegal, do not fall within a generalized or systematic policy, deliberately destructive, which characterizes in particular a crime against humanity ".

In 2018, Charles Michel, then Prime Minister, apologized on behalf of the Belgian state for the segregation of Métis children in Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. But for the complainants, this was not enough.

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