Belgian king hands back looted mask in Congo conciliation trip

KING Philippe of Belgium has returned a looted mask to the DR Congo on a trip billed as an opportunity for reconciliation over colonial atrocities.

The mask, called Kakungu, is the first of some 84,000 looted artefacts Belgium has agreed to return.

It was given to President Félix Tshisekedi at the beginning of a six-day trip hailed by the Congolese government as the beginning of a “new partnership”.

“We are not forgetting the past, we are looking to the future,” spokesman Patrick Muyaya said.

More than 10million people died during the reign of Belgium’s Leopold II, who made the Congo Free State his personal fiefdom in 1885.

Belgium’s brutal rule culminated with the Cia-backed assassination of newly independent Zaire’s first leader, Patrice Lumumba, in 1961.

His body was dissolved in acid so his burial place could not become a shrine to Congolese independence.

Gérard Soete, a Flemish police officer who helped with the disposal and is now deceased, took a gold tooth from the body like a “hunting trophy” and showed it off to his visitors.

Belgium is planning to return the tooth to DR Congo in an official ceremony on June 20.