History doesn't exist in a vacuum I'm afraid. If an entity, whether it's a person or a nation, commits atrocities and then stops doing so after becoming rich from it, can we call that justice?

Leopold II turned the Congo Free State into his personal, horrific rubber-and-ivory fiefdom from 1885 to 1908 and used the profits to bankroll massive architectural and infrastructure projects in Brussels, Antwerp, and Ostend (e.g., the Cinquantenaire park, the Royal Palace of Laeken, and the Antwerp Central Station).

The profits were deeply integrated into Belgium's financial and industrial sectors.

DRC's vast diamond wealth currently flows straight to Antwerp, meaning Belgium still captures the high-value "refining and trading" end of the supply chain, while the DRC is left with the environmental and human cost of raw extraction.

Major Belgian conglomerates, or companies born out of the colonial structure (like Umicore, formerly Union Minière du Haut-Katanga), transitioned from colonial owners to powerful multinational players. They still hold significant strategic advantages and interests in extracting critical minerals like cobalt and copper from Central Africa.

When the DRC gained independence in 1960, its first democratically elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, wanted to nationalize the country's resources so the Congolese people could finally benefit from them. Fearing the loss of mineral access, Belgian officials (with the help of the CIA) were deeply complicit in Lumumba's overthrow and assassination, replacing him with Mobutu Sese Seko, a brutal dictator who let Western corporations keep extracting wealth while plunging his own country into poverty.

Colonialism may have come to an end but Belgium is still a neocolonialist nation. So we can't even give it the benefit of saying that it has stopped.

This is for informational purposes only. European colonial history is not well taught in the Western world so it's important for people to realize that just because it was overlooked in their education that doesn't mean it's really ended.