_{The Belgian state has been found guilty of crimes against huFrom left, Marie-Jose Loshi, Monique Bitu Bingi, Lea Tavares Mujinga, Simone Ngalula and Noelle Verbeeken speak with each other as they look over papers in Brussels, Belgium, on June 29, 2020 [Francisco Seco/AP]}

Belgium was found guilty of crimes against humanity in colonial Congo.

The Belgian state has been found guilty of crimes against humanity for the forced removal of five mixed-race children from their mothers in colonial Congo.

In a long-awaited ruling issued on Monday, Belgium’s court of appeal said that five women, born in the Belgian Congo and now in their 70s, had been victims of “systematic kidnapping” by the state when they were removed from their mothers as small children and sent to Catholic institutions because of their mixed-race origins.

“This is a victory and a historic judgment,” Michèle Hirsch, one of the women’s lawyers, told the local media. “It is the first time in Belgium and probably in Europe that a court has condemned the Belgian colonial state for crimes against humanity.”

All five were born to Congolese mothers and European fathers, putting them in the crosshairs of the Belgian colonial state that deemed mixed-race children a threat to the white supremacist order.

They were forcibly removed from their Congolese mothers between 1948 and 1953 as small children and sent to a Catholic mission in the central southern Kasaï province in the Belgian Congo, many miles from their home villages.