planned in 2020 for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the country’s independence, the trip has been postponed several times due to the pandemic of COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine.
Le Monde with AFP
The King of Belgians Philippe will go on an official trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in June, his first visit to the former Belgian colony since the start of his reign in 2013, the Royal Palace announced Thursday 5 Thursday, . He will be in the DRC from June 7 to 13, accompanied by Queen Mathilde and Prime Minister Alexander de Croo, said the palace in a statement.
Initially scheduled for June 2020 for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the ex-Zaire independence (which has become the DRC), this trip had to be postponed several times, due in particular to the Pandemic of Covid-19, Then at the end of February after the trigger by Russia of the war in Ukraine.
This visit “at the invitation of the president of the DRC (…) Félix Tshisekedi” will stop in three Congolese cities, specifies the royal palace: the Belgian delegation must arrive in Kinshasa on June 7 at the end of the day, before Go to Lubumbashi (Katanga, South) and Bukavu (South Kivu, East).
Bukavu, on the edge of Lake Kivu, near the Rwandan and Burundian borders, is the city where Congolese gynecologist Denis Mukwege, co-laureate of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for his fight against sexual violence, works. >
“deep regrets for injuries” of the past
According to a source close to the file, the royal couple, who have already met in Belgium the one nicknamed “the man who repairs women”, could visit him in Bukavu in the Panzi clinic where he operates.
Beyond his function as a doctor, Denis Mukwege has become a symbol of the fight against impunity in the DRC. He campaigns for an international jurisdiction to finally seize war crimes perpetrated for twenty-five years in the eastern country, documented in particular in a 2010 UN report remained a dead letter.
Concerning the colonial past and the debate on the violence reproached for the former King Leopold II (who had made the Congo his personal property in 1885), the Belgo-Congolese relationship recently experienced a turning point.
On June 30, 2020, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of independence, King Philippe had presented “his deepest regrets for injuries” inflicted during the colonial period, a historic first.
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the year 2020 was also marked by the creation of a parliamentary commission responsible for “clarity” on the colonial past in Congo, Rwanda and Burundi and which will have to present Recommendations.