Once a powerful local Congolese leader, Lusinga Iwa Ng’ombe fought against Belgian colonial invaders in the late 19th century.
He was such a thorn in their side that Émile Storms, who commanded Belgian troops in the region, predicted that his head would “eventually end up in Brussels with a little label – it wouldn’t be out of place in a museum.”
This is exactly what happened. Mr. Storm Troops killed and beheaded Mr. Lusinga in 1884and his skull ended up in a box at the Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, with more than 500 human remains from former Belgian colonies.
His descendants are fighting for the return of his remains, their efforts taking place against the backdrop of a wider debate over Europe’s responsibility for colonial atrocities, reparations and the restitution of looted heritage.
Several European countries, including Belgium, have put in place guidelines for returning the objects, but the process has been extremely slow.
The restitution of human remains, which were often illegally and cruelly taken by European invaders from colonized territories, ending up in private hands or museums, has been even more difficult. In Belgium, the project is blocked by a deep-rooted reluctance to tackle the country’s colonial legacy.
Belgium has drafted a law to regulate the restitution of human remains, but it is likely that it will be put to a parliamentary vote only after the national elections in June. If passed, this law would establish the second framework in Europe for the restitution of human remains held in public collections, following a similar law adopted in December by France, which set strict conditions for restitution.
King Leopold II of Belgium seized large parts of central Africa in the mid-1880s, including what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, which he exploited for personal gain with immense cruelty . Although there are no official statistics, historians estimate that millions of people died during his reign, succumbing to famine and disease, or killed by colonizers.
Yet today this bloody chapter in Belgian history is not a compulsory part of the school curriculum, and some Belgians have defended Leopold as a founding figure. There are many streets and parks named after him and squares decorated with his statues.
In 2020, King Philippe of Belgium expressed his “deepest regrets” for his country’s brutal past in a letter to the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo on the 60th anniversary of its independence, but he stopped short of issuing an apology – which many feared would open the leads to legal action by those seeking compensation.
The conquest of the Congo coincided with the birth of modern anthropology, with Belgian scientists busy comparing the skulls of inhabitants of the Belgian regions of Flanders and Wallonia. Colonial expeditions, which often included doctors, were seen as opening new research opportunities, said Maarten Couttenier, a historian and anthropologist at the Africa Museum. Belgian colonels were encouraged to bring back human remains to prove their racial superiority.
The idea was, Mr. Couttenier said, “to measure the skull to determine the races.”
Mr Couttenier, along with his colleague Boris Wastiau, broke a decades-old silence over the acquisition and continued storage of the remains, which were known only to a handful of scientists, by making the information public through scientific conferences and exhibitions.
Subsequently, the discovery of Mr. Lusinga’s skull was brought to light thanks to a newspaper article published in 2018 in Paris Match, a French weekly. The news reached the Democratic Republic of Congo and Thierry Lusinga, who describes himself as a great-grandson of Mr. Lusinga, the leader.
Driven by this discovery, Thierry Lusinga wrote two letters to King Philippe of Belgium, requesting the remains of his ancestor, and a third to the Belgian consulate in Lubumbashi, his hometown.
“We believe that the right to claim his remains, or the remainder of his remains, belongs to our family,” he wrote in the first letter, seen by the New York Times and dated October 10, 2018. “We let’s hope that this will happen amicably, in circumstances of mutual forgiveness, in order to write a new page in history.
He said he never received a response.
In an interview with The Times, Mr. Lusinga expressed hope that it was still possible to resolve the problem. “We asked to do it amicably,” he said. “We hope to be able to sit down around a table and try to talk about repatriation, and maybe compensation for our family.”
Asked for comment, the Royal Palace confirmed that it had received but had not responded to one of Mr Lusinga’s letters, “because it did not mention any postal address and had not been addressed directly to the palace”.
The letter was sent to the palace by the Paris Match journalist and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, the palace said, with the institute specifying in writing that “the matter was closely monitored and handled by the competent authorities.” .
Questions about Mr. Lusinga’s skull have prompted Belgium to attempt to draw up a complete inventory of human remains held by its institutions. At the end of 2019, scientists set out to locate them in the reserves of museums and universities and to trace the origins of some of them.
More than a year after the project officially ended, its final report listing 534 human remains from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi was quietly published online this year, without informing some of the scientists who worked on it. worked nor the public.
Nearly half of the remains were removed from the former colonies well after the Belgian government regained control from King Leopold.
One of the researchers working on the report, Lies Busselen, discovered that between 1945 and 1946, a colonial agent, Ferdinand Van de Ginste, ordered the exhumation of around 200 skulls from graves in the Congolese provinces of Kwango and Kwilu.
Ms Busselen also rediscovered the long-lost skull of Prince Kapampa, a local Congolese leader killed in the 19th century, hidden in a cupboard at the Africa Museum.
Thomas Dermine, the Belgian secretary of state in charge of science policy, said in an interview that he was “surprised” by the number of human remains found in Belgian institutions. His office drafted the proposed law governing requests for the return of human remains.
The law project also requires a formal request from a foreign government, which could seek restitution on behalf of groups that still have “active culture and traditions.” Similar to French law, it also allows restitution only for funeral purposes.
Mr. Dermine said his administration had consulted with the authors of the inventory report, but they recommended that Belgium unconditionally repatriate all human remains from federal collections directly linked to its colonial past.
The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo said it was surprised to learn that the law was drafted “without consulting Congolese experts or the Congolese Parliament.”
“Belgium cannot unilaterally set restitution criteria,” François Muamba, special adviser to the DRC president, said in written comments to The Times.
“Unfortunately, Belgian methods do not seem to have changed,” he added.
Ferdinand Numbi Kanyepa, a sociology professor at the University of Lubumbashi who leads a research group working on the restitution issue, said the return of Mr. Lusinga’s skull was important for the entire Tabwa community, to which he belonged. .
“For us, an individual who has been killed, but is not buried, cannot rest with the other ancestral spirits,” said Mr. Kanyepa, himself a member of the Tabwa community. “This is why we believe that, at all costs, the skull of Chief Lusinga must return to the community, and even to the family, to receive a burial worthy of a king. »
Thierry Lusinga, whose request would not be considered legitimate under the bill, considered that there must be “something hidden behind” the non-restitution of the skull. “Maybe Belgium doesn’t want to be denounced as genocidal,” he said. “Maybe Belgium doesn’t want to hear this story.”
The skull of his ancestor is still preserved in a reserve of the Institute of Natural Sciences. Institute authorities indicated that at the request of the Africa Museum, the skull was transferred from a collective box to an individual box as a “mark of respect”.
Aurélien Breeden contributed to the report from Paris.