Explanation: The major colonial holding of Belgium was in the Congo, where their behavior was... abhorrent, even by the already extremely low standards of 19th century European colonists. Mutilation and abuses of a scale and type that are... not pleasant even just to recount. And with little justification for their atrocities.
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2025
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Given current events, it's probably not the worst idea to remind oneself of the depravity human beings are capable of. You know, just in case.
I wish I didn't agree.
Sometimes I jest want to live alone, in space.
Too little oxygen. Sometimes I just want all the anti-social assholes to be in space.
The independence of Congo was in 1960. Up until the end, Belgian troops would practice target shooting with random civilians, as a sport. There are probably old monsters alive in Belgium today that committed crimes in the Congo.
We even had human zoos in Brussels. With black people from the Congo in cages depicting what life was there.
We did some horrific things in our past.
There was one account from "King Leopold's ghost" where a Congo chief was asked to either go live in a Brussels zoo and travel the world as a spectacle or his village would be wiped out.
He chose to he a zoo animal and when his tour ended, the village was wiped out.
Still a lot of denial about this in Belgium. At school I was told that the accounts of hands being cut as a punishment for minor slights were greatly exaggerated.
Don't try to make jokes about someone's great-grandfather just asking the Congolese to lend a hand also, the posh people I said it to pretended they didn't get it.
At least the colony is democratic now!
It's in the name at least.