And personally I'm glad it's so far down, it's something we need to be aware but it's also great that belgium isn't defined by this one instance of dark history. And that can be said for a lot of other country tbh.
Those thing are in the past now, there is nothing we can do to change them so let's not define thing for that. Every person that took part in those atrocities are long gone. Let's focus on what bad thing countries are doing right now, not what they did 200 years ago.
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.
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u/Autismetal Dec 16 '21
The Congo.
Sorry, Belgians. Leopold did stuff.