Congo Free State
Genocide question

In the aftermath of the 1998 publication of King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild, where he had written "the killing in the Congo was of genocidal proportions", but "it was not strictly speaking a genocide", The Guardian reported that the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels would finance an investigation into some of the claims made by Hochschild. An investigatory panel announced in 2002, likely to be headed by Professor Jean-Luc Vellut, was scheduled to report its findings in 2004. Robert G. Weisbord stated in the 2003 Journal of Genocide Research that attempting to eliminate a portion of the population is enough to qualify as genocide under the UN convention. In the case of the Congo Free State, the unbearable conditions would qualify as a genocide.

In the aftermath of the report, an exhibition was held at the Royal Museum for Central Africa entitled The Memory of Congo. Critics, including Hochschild, claimed that there were "distortions and evasions" in the exhibition and stated: "The exhibit deals with this question in a wall panel misleadingly headed 'Genocide in the Congo?' This is a red herring, for no reputable historian of the Congo has made charges of genocide; a forced labor system, although it may be equally deadly, is different."

An early day motion presented to the British Parliament in 2006 described "the tragedy of King Leopold's regime" as genocide and called for an apology from the Belgian government. It received the signature of 48 members of parliament.
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