Belgium must explain why Leopold II still aas statues despite his atrocities in Congo

 

A bronze statue of King Leopold II standing on a pedestal in a public square in Belgium.

"Why should a statue be built for King Leopold II after he slaughtered ten million Africans in the Congo if there isn't one for Adolf Hitler, who killed six million Jews?" Joel Savage is curious. Particularly about King Leopold II of Belgium, the subject draws attention to a notable discrepancy in how past leaders and governments accountable for mass atrocities are honoring and celebrating their crimes in contemporary times.

 

The secret disposal of Patrice Lumumba’s body and Belgium’s hidden history

 

An image of Patrice Lumumba under arrest

Patrice Lumumba was the first prime minister of the Republic of the Congo and a pioneer of African unity. He was murdered on January 17, 1961, by the Belgian government after he fought for independence.

 

King Leopold II: A satirical examination of Belgium’s colonial atrocities

The monsters on the left are King Leopold II of Belgium and Idi Amin of Uganda

Very often, psychologists and psychiatrists have traced the cause of much of people’s behavior, character, and ailments to their homes. Therefore, it’s only through DNA analysis or a psychologist that we can give ourselves a precise account of the mental state of the lunatic King Leopold II of Belgium. 

  

But for someone from a royal family to have children with a prostitute tells you much about the distorted mental state of King Leopold II.

   

Among humans, there are many born monsters that take the form of humans to live among us with the aim of destroying other people without remorse or sympathy. 

Many such people, such as Idi Amin of Uganda, Pol Pot of Cambodia, Mao Zedong of China, Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler, etc., were born into the world.

 

One of such monstrous kings who ruled Belgium from 1865 to 1909 was King Leopold II, who had a dark heart similar to the one we had in an African country called Uganda. 

Referred to as the ‘Butcher of Uganda', Idi Amin violated the rights of Ugandans and ordered the killings of thousands of people under a reign of terror, making him one of the cruellest presidents in Africa, after Emperor Bokassa.

 

Unable to take part in the division of the world by the great powers, King Leopold II managed to organise several expeditions to Central Africa and gradually captured a fair amount of territory in the basin of the Congo River after bribing the leaders of local tribes. 

 

With the consent of other powers that were in no hurry to delve into the sparsely populated jungle, the Free State of the Congo was created, and Congo became his personal property. 

Related post: A Letter of Admonition to Sophie Wilmes, the Belgian Prime Minister

Congo is one of the richest countries in Africa, with rich resources including rubber plantations, which turned King Leopold into a monster, as rubber was in great demand for the automobile industry.

 

A shocked little boy standing by his mother, whose right hand had been chopped off

King Leopold created the police, both white and Black mercenaries, under the command of European officers and severely punished the Congolese for the slightest offence and simply for insufficient productivity in collecting rubber. 

Congo became famous not only for its rich natural resources, including cobalt, needed for electrical gadgets, including mobile telephones today, but also as a country where all kinds of atrocities and crimes were taking place.

People’s hands and feet were chopped, and the perpetrators often burned down the entire village. King Leopold’s greed propelled him to commit horrible crimes in Africa with impunity, as if the Congolese were animals in the slaughterhouse.

In fact, it’s difficult to give an account of how many lives perished at the hands of Leopold II, but some books claim it was close to ten million people, including women and children.

Unlike Idi Amin in Uganda, killing his own people, King Leopold II himself wasn’t in Congo. He was in Belgium when he gave the command for the killings, and as we know now, Belgium is a country that supported his crime by building statues and naming streets after the lunatic king.

 

Some of the victims of the madness of King Leopold II were children.

During Leopold’s reign of terror, he named Congo’s capital Leopoldville in his honor. Leopoldville has now changed to Kinshasa.  In 1908, under pressure from his own parliament and foreign states, the old king sold the Free State of the Congo to the Belgian government and died a year later.

 

Much of the wealth brought to the king by the colonial enterprise went to the former French prostitute Caroline Lacroix, who was 49 years younger than Leopold. Caroline gave him two sons, and a couple of days before the death of Leopold, she persuaded the monarch to marry her. 

 

Strange things happen sometimes; it seems those Leopolds had their hands chopped off, and spirits were seeking revenge. It was reported that Carolina's youngest child was born with an undeveloped hand. 

 

Upon hearing of this, a British satirical magazine published a terrible cartoon: Leopold II holds a mutilated baby in his arms, and around the corpses of Congolese with severed limbs. The signature reads: "Retribution from above."

 

The statue of Leopold on a horse. The Belgian government and the royal family honor a killer for a job well done

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Indeed, King Leopold was one of the evilest kings ever to be on earth, with so many questions unanswered. What makes people so cruel? And why do such people’s families often support the crimes of their relatives? Is it because of the same DNA or blood? 

It’s a shame for the entire Belgian government and the royal family.

A letter of admonition to Sophie Wilmes, the Belgian Prime Minister

 

Sophie Wilmès, former Prime Minister of Belgium, speaking at a public event.

Dear Prime Minister Sophie Wilmes, certain things are going on in the country, which I consider it necessary to let you know, since from the colonial era, the Belgian government has committed and supported so much crime to the extent that the government can no longer acknowledge what a crime is and what is not.

 

There are three great politicians I deeply respect in Belgium. They are the Mayor of Antwerp, Bart De Wever; the former Belgian Prime Minister, Charles Michel; and the current Health Minister, Maggie De Block.

 

Due to these politicians, whose hard work has transformed Belgium, I have to restrain myself to choose my words carefully over issues I seriously consider as a crime. There is no one above the law, yet in Belgium, many crimes are committed against Black people with impunity.

 

Belgium is one of the European countries that has committed horrible crimes against Black people in Africa, especially in its former colony of Congo. Surprisingly, at the end of the systematic abuse and crime against Black people in Africa, the Belgian government extended it by building statues and naming streets after the perpetrator, King Leopold II.

 

In my opinion, Belgium should have been famous as the world’s best quality beer and chocolate producer, but the country is known to have burned down the houses of villagers and killed over 10 million Africans, including women and children, to satisfy the greed of one monster called Leopold II.

 

People are educated not only to be leaders but also to find solutions to problems affecting our society, yet, like America, it seems Belgium has also taken delight in committing crimes against Black people rather than finding solutions to ease racial tensions and violence around the world.

 

I have been in Belgium for the past 20 years. Nobody told me that Belgium is a country that has no respect for Black people. My experience as a Black man and my efforts as a writer revealed a lot to me about how Belgium underestimates Black people like the United States of America.

 

I want to make it clear to the Belgian government that having access to someone’s blog to remove all the articles I have written about the crimes your country and King Leopold II committed in Africa is not only a violation of my rights but also a serious crime that needs to be addressed.

 

In fact, nothing favors a Black man in Belgium, including the judicial system. If there is a unique law in Belgium, I would have taken a good lawyer to sue the government for illegally and criminally getting into my blog to remove published articles exposing your crimes in Africa, while you have a statue of the perpetrator in your country.

 

To the Belgian government, it is right to build a statue for a king that did commit horrible crimes against humanity in Africa with impunity because the victims were Black, but it's wrong for an African writer to write articles about the crimes Belgium committed in Africa, so the government or whoever has the right to take away my articles.

 

It’s even shameful for the Belgian government; instead of finding solutions to save the lives of people who have been sent to their untimely graves by the coronavirus, you had the time to go into a blog to remove my articles because they are nightmares to you.

 

This is not the first time the Belgian government has removed my published article from the web, but this time, going into my blog to remove and edit links to my articles about Belgium and the royal family is a serious crime. I will write about it because Belgium will definitely send me to jail if I commit such a crime by illegally gaining access to the government’s computer to delete something from it.

 

The Belgian government and the royal family can’t stand the truth, which is why they find my articles uncomfortable. Why can’t the government do the right thing by demolishing those senseless statues rather than declaring war on my articles? Why have the Belgian government and the royal family, for decades, seen that they are supporting crimes by building a statue for a killer rather than a king?

 

Stuivenberg Hospital

 

A couple of years ago, when I went to the notorious Stuivenberg Hospital in Antwerp to investigate the abnormally high death rate of Black people in that hospital, the City of Antwerp called me a crazy man, but they didn’t call the Belgian government or the royal family crazy for building a statue for a criminal.

 

However, one thing the Belgian government can never deny is that after my investigation at the Stuivenberg, the hospital is now one of the safest hospitals in Antwerp. People think they have the power to do whatever wrong thing they like, but often forget that any wrong that they do will eventually come back to bite them in the rear, and they will never see it coming.

 

If my investigation wasn’t accurate, that Africans were deliberately killed and organs removed, why then did the mayor of Antwerp, Patrick Janssens, send a group of police to protect the hospital for two weeks? Evildoers always run when nobody is after them. The police were there because the crime against Africans in that hospital was uncovered.

 

The Belgian government can underestimate me and continue to give me disrespect because I don’t need their respect, but please, the government or whoever is responsible must stop taking articles from my blog because it’s a crime.

 

They must put an end to it immediately because that’s not going to stop me from writing, and finally, all the articles the Belgian government or whoever is responsible has removed from my blog shall be rewritten or appear as new articles.