Mixed-race women born in colonial-era Belgian Congo compensated

A court in Belgium has ordered the state to pay reparations to five mixed-race women born in colonial-era Belgian Congo.

Thousands of children born to black mothers and white fathers, known as métis (mixed-race), were forcibly separated from their families during the 1940s and 1950s and put in religious institutions.

The children were deemed to be a threat to the white supremacist colonial order and many suffered abuse in church-run orphanages.

"I was two years old. Look at that, two years old," said Noëlle Verbeken, one of the women that filed the lawsuit.

"When I look back at this period, there is good and bad, mostly bad. We were cloistered, of course, there were several of us, young and old," she said in an interview with CGTN.

Verbeken and the four other plaintiffs were sent to the Catholic mission of Saint-Vincent-de Paul in Katende, located in the Kasaï province of Belgian Congo, between 1948 and 1953.

"When we ate rice, it was a feast day, but we were deprived of a mother and a father, so it was really hard. We don't know what a maternal or paternal feeling is, it really hurt. Luckily we helped each other anyway," Verbeken said. 

Colonial rule came to an end in 1960 but what followed was a period of political instability and violence.

The girls from the Katende mission were told they would be evacuated to Belgium but the promise never materialized. Verbeken was among those that didn't automatically receive Belgian citizenship despite having a Belgian father. It's a fight she eventually won and she now lives in the Belgian city of Liege.

"We have no identity, so we had to have at least one identity recognized throughout the world. That is why we fought and we have the right and we got it, these rights to be recognized as Belgian and that our children should also have this nationality," she said.

Roughly 20,000 people are believed to have been victims of Belgium's forced separation policy.

The country issued a formal apology back in 2019 but two years later, Noelle and four other women took legal action against the Belgian state seeking reparations. 

A court initially ruled that too much time had passed for them to be eligible for compensation. However, a subsequent ruling from an appeals court found Belgium guilty of crimes against humanity and ruled the women had been victims of systematic kidnapping.

"We won against the Belgian State and we are proud of that. We, of small nature, five women who are against a state, an entire state. But it is worth it. It is a joy and truly a great joy and a great triumph," Verbeken said.

"We are courageous. Don't take us for little girls. We are great ladies and we have this determination," she added.