Belgium removes bust of racist king
BRUSSELS—BELGIUM removed a bust of racist king Leopold II on Tuesday, hours after the current king, Philippe, acknowledged the atrocities committed in its former colony, the first time for a Belgian monarch. Leopold II, the brother of King Philippe’s great-grandfather, Albert I, also cast an eye on the Philippines in the 19th century, years before he acquired the Congo with the help of British explorer Henry Stanley.
BRUSSELS—BELGIUM removed a bust of racist king Leopold II on Tuesday, hours after the current King Philippe expressed regret for the deaths and national exploitation inflicted on the former Belgian colony of what is now Congo.
“I want to express my deepest regrets for the wounds of the past, the pain of which is revived today by discriminations that are still too present in our societies,” the king wrote in the letter sent to Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi on the 60th anniversary of the end of Belgian colonial rule.
It was the first time a Belgian monarch acknowledged the atrocities committed in its former colony under the reign of Leopold II, the brother of King Philippe’s great grandfather Albert I.
But Western media noted that the letter stopped short of a formal apology because some members of the Belgian royal family, particularly King Philippe’s brother Prince Laurent, continued to extol Leopold II as a “builder king.”
The monarch, who ruled Belgium from 1865-1909, plundered Congo as a personal fiefdom, forcing many of its people into slavery to extract resources for his own profit.
According to Inquirer columnist Ambeth Ocampo, Leopold II instructed his ambassador to Spain in 1866 to persuade Queen Isabella II to cede the Philippines to Belgium but the plan failed.
A decade later, Leopold II organized a private holding company and, with the help of British explorer Henry Stanley, established colonies in the Congo which led to forced labor and other forms of brutality that historians claim left as many as 10 million Congolese dead.
Warehouse storage
On Tuesday, a crane took down Leopold’s bust at a small park in Ghent amid the applause of antiracism activists. It will be transferred to a warehouse of a Ghent city museum pending further decision from a city’s commission in charge of decolonization projects.
In the United States, the state of Mississippi removed the “Stars and Bars”—a symbol of the pro-slavery Confederate States of America and the White supremacist Ku Klux Klan.
Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed the historic bill on Tuesday at the Governor’s Mansion, immediately removing official status for the 126-yearold banner that has been a source of division for generations.
“This is not a political moment to me but a solemn occasion to lead our Mississippi family to come together, to be reconciled and to move on,” Reeves said. “We are a resilient people defined by our hospitality. We are a people of great faith. Now, more than ever, we must lean on that faith, put our divisions behind us and unite for a greater good.”
The Stars and Bars, conceived in opposition to the antislavery “Stars and Stripes,” consists of a red field under blue X with 13 white stars and was placed on the upper-left corner of the Mississippi flag in 1894, almost 30 years after the American Civil War.