‘Children of sin’ sue Belgium

Five mixed-race women who were forcibly removed from their mothers in Belgian-Congo during the colonial era are suing the Belgian Government for crimes against humanity. Their complaint states that the ‘child abduction’ was ‘organised by the Belgian state and carried out with the help of the church’. They are each seeking $56 000 in damages. The victims, all in their 70s, were born to Congolese mothers and white settler fathers in the 1940s and raised in a convent. About 20 000 other children are believed to have suffered the same fate with most fathers refusing to acknowledge the paternity of their children. ‘We were told that we were the children of sin at every moment ... we were traumatised,’ Monique Bitu told Belgian broadcaster RTBF. Author and researcher Assumani Budagwa told the BBC that mixed-race children represented a threat to the colonial administration and ‘were also seen as possible seeds for a revolt and therefore taken away from their mothers'. No court date has been set.

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