By Sabine CessouPosted on 23-02-2019Modified on 23-02-2019 at 17:26

The Geneva-based UN expert group on people of African origin recommended on February 11 that Belgium apologize for its colonial past. The atrocities committed during this "dark period" of history have been singled out. Since then, the controversy is swelling, without one moving for the moment to an official apology.

For a week, a group of UN experts traveled across Belgium - passing through Brussels, Antwerp, Namur, Charleroi and Liège - to meet representatives of the authorities, NGOs and civil society. Here is his conclusion: " There seems to be a wall of silence about colonization. In order for there to be true reconciliation and the process of decolonization continuing, an apology from the Belgian state would be a first step. According to one of the UN experts, Dominique Day, the report sends a " wake up call " to Belgium, where " people do not make the connection between prejudices, discrimination and colonial history .

The political world has been very circumspect. Charles Michel, the centrist Prime Minister, was initially surprised by a " strange report ", an intermediate document which he expects the final version in September. Another political tenor, Rudi Vervoort, the socialist minister-president of the Brussels-Capital region, on the contrary, felt that the authorities must " be able to recognize our responsibility " for the colonial past.

" A historic forgiveness must be pronounced, it seems to me really appropriate, because a large number of people were murdered for money, " said Bart de Wever, president of the Flemish Liberals (NV-A). Although his party has radical positions against immigration, he felt that responsibility for apology lies with the king, the figure of Leopold II being central in colonial history. Asked in the wake of the Belga press agency, the Royal Palace did not wish to comment on the appeal of the UN committee of experts, referring to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Africa Museum Pinned

The controversy comes in a context marked by a lively debate on decolonization, revived by the reopening in December of the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, a vestige of the colonial era. This institution, dusted and renamed Africa Museum, was nevertheless pinned by the report of the experts of the United Nations. His wrong? To be still too much stamped with colonial imagery, with offensive and racist representations.

Guido Greyssels, the director of the museum, said he was " surprised by these conclusions ", which he finds " superficial ". The experts only stayed one hour in the museum, he says, and hardly more than 5 minutes in the room on the colonial past. " I agree that Belgium must recognize that there have been mistakes in the colonial past, which is a matter of education, " continues Guido Greyssels. " The museum does not have the role of broadcasting activist messages. "

The golden statues that remain in the museum's rotunda, to the glory of the " civilizing " mission of Belgium, with the posed hand of a large settler on the heads of Africans who are smaller than children, have could not be removed. They are indeed classified as a historical monument. " They are part of the heritage, you have to see them as part of the context, " says Guido Greyssels.

A throbbing debate

The same group of experts pointed out in 2013 in the Netherlands the racist character of the Zwarte Piet tradition - "Peter the Black", the figure of the servant of St. Nicholas. A huge wave of defensive reactions and threats against the UN delegation followed.

In Belgium, no comparable uproar, but a throbbing debate whose different aspects are "as many pieces stacked for decades ," notes Gia Abrassart, journalist, author and host of the Coffee Congo. Latest examples: the Tintin comic in Congo was reissued last January by the Moulinsart Foundation for the 90th anniversary of Tintin, as a reason for pride while it is contested for its racist character. The title of a symposium held on February 15 at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) has made some leap for its violence: " For a management policy of colonial collections of human remains in universities ."

Another sign of reluctance to return to a past with which some maintain an ambiguous relationship, this statement: " Leopold II freed the Congolese and pacified the Congo where there were many wars. The sentence, delivered on a RTL set by Aymeric de la Motte, of Mémoires du Congo, an association that documents the Belgian presence in Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, has made a Congolese mayor, Pierre Kompany, jump: " For you, 20 million dead, is not it? ".

For the Afro-descendant associations, which have the feeling of finally being heard, the strong signal sent by the United Nations represents a big step forward. " The fact that a group outside Belgium comes to say that it is time to do something is bothering politicians, certainly, explains Gia Abrassart. But whatever the positions of the others on the restitution of African works of art or the decolonial movement, one can not escape an examination of conscience. "

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