Will Belgium correct its colonial mistakes? New bill offers hope, but also receives criticism

Lusinga Iwa Ng’ombe, once a powerful local Congolese leader, fought against Belgian colonial invaders in the late 19th century.
He was such a thorn in their side that Émile Storms, who commanded Belgian troops in the region, made the following prediction: “His head might arrive with a label on it in Brussels, where it will not will look out of place in a museum.”

That’s exactly what happened. Storms’ forces killed and beheaded Lusinga in 1884 and his skull ended up in a box in the Brussels Institute of Natural Sciences, along with more than 500 other human remains from former Belgian colonies.

His descendants are now fighting for the return of his remains. Their efforts are set against the backdrop of a larger debate about Europe’s responsibility for colonial atrocities, reparations and the return of looted heritage.

Slow process

Several European countries, including Belgium, have established guidelines for returning artifacts, but the process is painfully slow. And the return of human remains, often illegally and cruelly taken from colonized areas by European invaders and ending up in private property or in museums, is even more difficult. In Belgium, the process has stalled due to a deep-seated unwillingness to tackle the colonial legacy.

Our country has drawn up a law to regulate the return of human remains, but this will probably only be voted on in parliament after the June elections. If this law is passed, Belgium will become the second country in Europe with a legal framework for the return of human remains in public collections. In December, a similar law – with strict conditions that must be met to allow returns – was passed in France.

Critics believe that this legal framework should have been in place a long time ago. But this law is far from a complete reckoning with one of the most horrific chapters in the history of European colonialism.

Deepest regret

King Leopold II seized much of Central Africa, including modern Congo, in the mid-1880s, which he exploited with enormous brutality for personal gain. Although there are no official statistics, historians estimate that millions of people died under his rule; many succumbed to mass starvation and disease, others were murdered by colonizers.

Yet that bloody chapter of Belgian history is not a mandatory part of the curriculum today and some defend Leopold II as an important figure in the development of Belgium. Several streets and parks still bear his name and many squares still have a statue of him.

In 2020, King Philippe expressed his “deepest regret” for his country’s brutal actions in a letter to the President of Congo on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Congolese independence. However, there was no real apology.

The conquest of Congo coincided with the birth of modern anthropology and Belgian scientists compared skulls of the country’s inhabitants with those of inhabitants of Flanders and Wallonia. The colonial expeditions, in which doctors often participated, were seen as new opportunities for research, says Maarten Couttenier, historian and anthropologist at the Africa Museum. Belgian colonels were encouraged to bring back human remains to provide evidence of the Europeans’ racial superiority. Couttenier explains that skulls were measured and people were divided into races based on those measurements.

Couttenier, together with colleague Boris Wastiau, broke decades of silence about the acquisition and further storage of the remains, something that only a few scientists knew about. Couttenier and Wastiau made the information public through scientific conferences and exhibitions.

Afterwards, the discovery of Lusinga’s skull came to light through a news article published in 2018 in the French weekly Paris Match. The news reached Congo and reached Thierry Lusinga, who claims to be a great-grandchild of Lusinga.

Following the find, Thierry Lusinga wrote two letters to King Philip, asking for the return of his ancestor’s remains, and a third to the Belgian consulate in Lubumbashi, his hometown.

“We believe that the right to claim his remains, or the rest of his remains, belongs to our family,” he wrote in the first letter, which was dated October 10, 2018. “We hope that this matter will be resolved amicably will happen, in conditions of mutual forgiveness, to write a new page in history.” Lusinga says he never received an answer.

Receive letters

In an interview with The New York Times Lusinga expressed the hope that it was still possible to resolve the issue. Lusinga: “We have asked to settle this amicably. We hope that we can sit around the table and talk about repatriation and, why not, about compensation for our family.”

The Royal Palace states that it received one of Lusinga’s letters, but did not respond to it “because it did not contain a postal address and the letter was not addressed directly to the Palace.”

The letter was forwarded to the Palace by the journalist Paris Match and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, the Palace said, with the institute writing that “the matter was being closely monitored and handled by the relevant authorities.”

534 remains

The questions about Lusinga’s skull have prompted Belgium to try to make a complete inventory of the human remains in the possession of its institutions. At the end of 2019, scientists set out to locate them in the storage rooms of museums and universities and to trace the provenance of some objects.

More than a year after the project officially ended, the final report listing 534 human remains from Congo, Rwanda and Burundi was discreetly published online this year. The public was not informed and even some scientists who had contributed were not informed of the publication.

Nearly half of the remains were taken from then-colonies long after the Belgian government took control from Leopold, the report showed. One of the researchers who contributed to the report, Lies Busselen, discovered that between 1945 and 1946 a colonial agent, Ferdinand Van de Ginste, ordered the exhumation of approximately 200 skulls from graves in the Congolese provinces of Kwango and Kwilu.
Busselen also rediscovered the long-lost skull of Prince Kapampa, a local Congolese leader who was murdered in the 19th century, hidden in a storage cupboard in the Africa Museum.

Thomas Dermine (PS), State Secretary for Science Policy, said in an interview that he was “surprised” by the number of human remains found in Belgian institutions. His cabinet has drafted the bill that regulates claims for the return of human remains.

The bill also requires a formal request from a foreign government. Refunds can be requested on behalf of groups that still have an “active culture and traditions.” Like French law, this law also allows restitution only for funerary purposes.

Dermine has said his administration has consulted with the authors of the inventory report. However, they recommend that Belgium unconditionally repatriate all human remains in federal collections that are directly related to its colonial past.

The Congolese government says it is surprised that the law was drawn up “without consulting Congolese experts or the Congolese parliament.” “Belgium cannot unilaterally determine the criteria for restitution,” said François Muamba, special advisor to the President of Congo. “Unfortunately, the Belgian methods do not seem to have changed.”

Fernand Numbi Kanyepa, professor of sociology at the University of Lubumbashi and head of a research group working on restitution, says the return of Lusinga’s skull is important for the entire Tabwa community, to which he belonged.

“For us, someone who has been killed but not buried cannot rest with the other ancestral spirits,” said Kanyepa, himself a member of the Tabwa. “That is why we believe that the skull of Chief Lusinga must be returned to the community, and even to the family, at all costs, to receive burial worthy of one king.”

Thierry Lusinga, whose request would not be legitimate according to the bill, says that he believes there is “something hidden” behind the fact that the skull is not returned. Lusinga: “Maybe Belgium does not want to be charged with genocide. Maybe Belgium doesn’t want to hear this story.”

The skull of his ancestor is still kept in a storage room of the Institute of Natural Sciences. Institute authorities say the skull was transferred from a collective box to an individual box at the request of the Africa Museum as “a sign of respect.”

_{© The New York Times}