this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
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Lots of members of civil society and private companies participated in the atrocities though. And Belgium has been a democracy since its independence, so "the people" are further responsible by being complacent despite contemporary reporting on the atrocities (especially from British investigators as I remember it).
Then the Belgian government continuously failed the Congolese people, especially with the decolonization process which was rushed and ill-prepared which led to a civil war and the rise of Mobutu.
In Rwanda Belgium was one of the actors who cowardly failed to act to prevent genocide.
To say "it's the king" or "it's the government" is way too easy. The country as a whole is responsible for what happened to the Belgian Congo.
It' also way too easy to blame the country as a whole. We're talking 120 years ago, people mostly had to believe what they were told. The availability of most information was non-existent, and lots of people were illiterate. You might think that lots op people live in echo chambers today, but back then the church told you how you should behave and that was it.
.... This was Belgium, not a backwater shithole. It was one of the richest countries in the world, the illiteracy rate was already very low. The enlightenment was two centuries prior and Belgium was very much part of it.
The individual baker who never set foot in the Congo may not be personally responsible, but there definitely is a collective responsibility from the population. Like I said, this was reported on and I am sure that if you go back you will find all the major newspapers reported on it long before the Belgian government took back control. It was just politically convenient for most to ignore Leopold II's exactions.