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 his side that Émile Storms, who commanded Belgian troops in the region, predicted that his head would “eventually end up in Brussels with a little tag; “It wouldn’t be out of place in a museum.”
That’s exactly what happened. Storms troops killed and beheaded Lusinga in 1884, and his skull ended up in a box at the Brussels-based Institute of Natural Sciences, along with more than 500 human remains taken from former Belgian colonies.
Their descendants are fighting to recover their remains, and their efforts are taking place in the context of a broader debate about Europe’s responsibility for colonial atrocities, reparations and the restitution of looted heritage.
Several European countries, including Belgium, have established guidelines for returning artifacts, but the process has been painfully slow.
The restitution of human remains, which were often illegally and cruelly removed by European invaders from colonized territories and ended up in private hands or in museums, has been even more complicated. In Belgium, it has been bogged down by a deep-seated reluctance to deal with the country’s colonial legacy.
Belgium has drafted a law to regulate the restitution of human remains, but it is likely to be put to a parliamentary vote only after national elections in June. If approved, it would establish the second framework in Europe for the restitution of human remains held in public collections, following a similar law passed in December by France, which established strict conditions for restitution.
King Leopold II of Belgium seized much of central Africa in the mid-1880s, including the modern Democratic Republic of the Congo, which he exploited for personal gain with immense cruelty. Although there are no official statistics, historians estimate that millions died under his rule, succumbing to mass starvation and disease, or murdered by colonizers.
Today, however, that bloody chapter in Belgian history is not a mandatory part of the school curriculum, and some Belgians have defended Leopold as a pivotal figure. There are multiple streets and parks named after him and squares decorated with statues of him.
In 2020, King Philippe of Belgium expressed his “deep regret” for his country’s brutal past in a letter to the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of its independence, but stopped short of apologizing, somewhat Many feared this would open the door to legal action by those seeking reparations.
The conquest of the Congo coincided with the birth of modern anthropology, with Belgian scientists busy comparing skulls of residents in the Belgian regions of Flanders and Wallonia. Colonial expeditions, which often included doctors, were seen as opening up new opportunities for research, said Maarten Couttenier, a historian and anthropologist at the Africa Museum. Belgian colonels were encouraged to bring back human remains to provide evidence of racial superiority.
The idea was, Coutenier said, “to measure the skull to determine the races.”
Couttenier, along with his colleague Boris Wastiau, broke a decades-long silence about the acquisition and continued storage of the remains, which were only known to a handful of scientists, by making the information public through scientific conferences and exhibitions.
The discovery of Mr. Lusinga’s skull subsequently came to light through a news article published in 2018 in Paris Match, a French weekly. The news reached the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Thierry Lusinga, who described himself as the great-grandson of Mr. Lusinga, the chief.
Prompted by the discovery, Thierry Lusinga wrote two letters to King Philip 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 your remains, or the rest of your remains, belongs to our family,” he wrote in the first letter, seen by The New York Times and dated October 10, 2018. “We hope that this matter “It will develop amicably, in circumstances of mutual forgiveness, to write a new page in history.”
He said he never received a response.
In an interview with The Times, Lusinga expressed hope that it was still possible to resolve the issue. “We asked to do this amicably,” she said. “We hope to be able to sit around a table and try to talk about repatriation and, why not, about compensation for our family.”
When asked for comment, the Royal Palace confirmed it had received but did not respond to one of Mr Lusinga’s letters, “as it did not mention any postal address and was not addressed directly to the palace”.
The letter had been transferred to the palace by the Paris Match journalist and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, the palace said, and the institute stated in writing that “the matter was being closely followed and handled by the relevant authorities.”
Questions about Mr. Lusinga’s skull led Belgium to attempt to make a full inventory of the human remains held by its institutions. In late 2019, scientists set out to locate them in museum and university storage spaces and 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 the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi was quietly posted online this year, without notifying some of the scientists who worked on it or to the public.
Nearly half of the remains were removed from the former colonies long after the Belgian government took over from King Leopold.
One of the researchers who worked on the report, Lies Busselen, discovered that between 1945 and 1946, a colonial agent, Ferdinand Van de Ginste, ordered the exhumation of about 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 murdered in the 19th century, hidden in a cupboard at the Africa Museum.
Thomas Dermine, the Belgian secretary of state responsible for science policy, said in an interview that he was “surprised” by the number of human remains found in Belgian institutions. His office drafted the bill regulating claims for the restitution of human remains.
The bill also requires a formal request from a foreign government, which could request restitution on behalf of groups that still have “active culture and traditions.” Like French law, it also allows restitution only for funeral purposes.
Dermine said his administration consulted the authors of the inventory report, but they recommended that Belgium unconditionally repatriate all human remains in federal collections directly related to its colonial past.
The DRC government said it was surprised to learn that the law was being drafted “without consulting Congolese experts or the Congolese Parliament.”
“Belgium cannot unilaterally set the criteria for restitution,” François Muamba, special adviser to the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said in written comments to the Times.
“Unfortunately, Belgian methods do not seem to have changed,” he added.
Ferdinand Numbi Kanyepa, a professor of sociology at the University of Lubumbashi who heads a research group working on the issue of restitution, 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 not buried, cannot rest with the other spirits of the ancestors,” said Kanyepa, a member of the Tabwa community. “That is why we believe that, at all costs, Chief Lusinga’s skull must be returned to the community, and even the family, to receive a burial fit for a king.”
Thierry Lusinga, whose request would not be considered legitimate under the bill, said there must have been “something hidden behind” the failure to return the skull. “Perhaps Belgium does not 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 warehouse at the Institute of Natural Sciences. Institute authorities said that at the request of the Africa Museum, the skull has been moved from a collective box to an individual one as “a sign of respect.”
Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Paris.