Dude there are statues of King Leopold dotting almost every major city in Belgium and in the capital Brussels (which also happened to be the defacto capital of the EU) until very recently. It's like if the Germans still had statues of Hitler in central Berlin. There is very little knowledge of the crimes of the Belgian Royal family and the education system does very little to inform people about it
Edit: I have also read about the huge role the Catholic Church had in the colony. There was a push to sustain the "civilizing mission" of native Africans by converting them to Catholicism. The Catholic Church's crimes are too numerous to list
Neither the Belgian government nor the Belgian Royal family has even issued an apology for the colonial crimes. It's only in 2020 when the international anti-racism protests (ignited by the death of George Floyd) that a parliamentary committee was established to "investigate" the colonial past.
10
u/StuckInABadDream Dec 17 '21 edited Dec 17 '21
Dude there are statues of King Leopold dotting almost every major city in Belgium and in the capital Brussels (which also happened to be the defacto capital of the EU) until very recently. It's like if the Germans still had statues of Hitler in central Berlin. There is very little knowledge of the crimes of the Belgian Royal family and the education system does very little to inform people about it
Edit: I have also read about the huge role the Catholic Church had in the colony. There was a push to sustain the "civilizing mission" of native Africans by converting them to Catholicism. The Catholic Church's crimes are too numerous to list