by Amelia Wynne
Activists removed a statue of Belgium’s King Leopold II in Brussels last week, days after another had been taken down in Antwerp.
The figure was removed from its plinth on June 11 leaving an empty stand in the Auderghem neighbourhood. Photos show the separated bust on the floor nearby covered in red paint.
Leopold owned the Belgian Congo as his personal property from 1885 to 1908 and subjected its people to forced labour while he exploited the country’s rubber reserves – leading to millions of deaths in what some regard as a genocide.
Statues of the colonial-era monarch have become a focus of anger and debate in Belgium amid worldwide protests that followed the killing of black American George Floyd on May 25.
A statue of former Belgian King Leopold II sprayed with a graffiti is seen in the park of the Africa Museum, in Tervuren, near Brussels, Belgium, June 9, 2020
A number of representations of Leopold II have been vandalised, with statues burnt and daubed in red paint.
On Tuesday a statue of Leopold was taken down in Antwerp after it was vandalised by protesters. The mayor’s office said the statue was removed to be ‘restored’ after it was daubed with paint, but said it was unlikely to return to its public pedestal.
Separately, a statue of King Baudouin – Belgium’s second-longest reigning monarch after Leopold II – was found smeared bright red in a park in front of Brussels’ Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula last Friday. The word ‘reparation’ was painted on the back.
‘This is not how we proceed in a democracy. This is not how we put history back on the right track,’ Auderghem Mayor Didier Gosuin told RTBF. ‘On the contrary, these are acts which shock, which block, which create tensions, conflicts.’
A picture taken on June 10, 2020 shows the defaced statue of King Leopold II of Belgium in Brussels
Gosuin said the municipality of Auderghem had a few days ago removed a sentence from a memorial that honoured ‘those who brought civilization to Congo’.
There had previously been separate calls to take down Leopold monuments in Brussels, where one of his busts was covered in red paint last week.
Leopold is honoured with several monuments after ruling Belgium from 1865 to 1909, the longest reign in the kingdom’s history.
But his exploitation of the Congo Free State is seen as brutal even by the standards of the time, with millions thought to have died under Leopold’s personal rule.
Leopold amassed a huge personal fortune while the Congolese were killed or savagely maimed working on his rubber plantations.
Locals who failed to produce enough rubber would have their hands chopped off or their women taken hostage until the target was met. Others were shot dead.
Activists removed a statue of Belgium’s King Leopold II in Brussels last week, days after another had been taken down in Antwerp.
A plinth of a statue of former Belgian King Leopold II, a controversial figure in the history of Belgium, is pictured after the statue was removed in Brussels
The plunder of resources also included ivory, copper and diamonds, while Leopold even imported some Congolese people to be put on show at a ‘human zoo’ in Belgium.
Other looted treasures were put on display at the Africa Museum in Brussels, which Leopold used as a ‘propaganda tool’ for his colonial project.
American writer Adam Hochschild claimed in his 1998 book King Leopold’s Ghost that the death toll from Leopold’s policies was as high as 10million Congolese.
In fiction, the Belgian Congo provided the backdrop for Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad’s classic novel on colonial exploitation.
The exploitation made Belgium a successful trading economy, but sparked an outcry which has been described as one of the world’s first major human rights campaigns.
After the atrocities came to light, Leopold was eventually stripped of personal ownership of the Congo in 1908.
However, Congo did not become independent until 1960 and many Belgians remain uninformed about their country’s colonial past.
While the former king and some of his most notorious lieutenants are still honoured in street names and statues, protests have been growing over his legacy.
More than 64,000 people had signed a petition demanding that Brussels take down its Leopold II statues.