I am interested in this topic. It has become a great debate in my country (which is neither Belgium nor in Africa). Is this really true? What is Belgium doing in Africa?
It's not what it's doing now, but what did in the past. Belgium was given the territory that's now the Democratic Republic of Congo when Europe partitioned Africa. Belgium couldn't control all that territory, so they created a very brutal system to keep everyone under control which was extremely brutal. That same system was applied to the production of certain goods, which Belgium claimed the profits. The system was extremely deadly, causing between 5-10 million dead people, and very few people even know what happened in the Congo because of Belgium
Not to mention all the land changes they did then that unwittingly caused epidemics to spread in the continent, some to this day. Diseases that would have been naturally cordoned off by the terrain were unleashed when rivers were diverted, etc to allow ships access from the coast to the Belgian Congo.
Comments