BRUSSELS: More than a century after King Leopold II of Belgium claimed Congo as his personal colony, an unprecedented investigation into Belgium’s murky colonial past and long-ignored allegations of genocide is to be held.

To the fury, no doubt, of Belgium’s dwindling band of “old colonials,” the state-funded Royal Museum for Central Africa has commissioned some of the country’s most eminent historians to give the public the one thing they have been deprived of for so long: the truth.

Shocking claims — often well documented — that 10 million Congolese were either murdered or worked to death by Leopold’s private army, that women were systematically raped, that locals’ hands were cut off and that the local populace endured kidnapping, looting and village burnings, have never been the subject of serious debate in Belgium, let alone an apology.

Many of these allegations are set out in a book called King Leopold’s Ghost by American author Adam Hochschild. When it was published in Belgium in 1999, it outraged the country’s historians but failed to bring about a genuine period of reflection. Controversially, Hochschild compared the death toll in the Belgian-administered Congo to the Holocaust and Stalin’s purges.

The investigation will force the country to confront its colonial demons and tackle a subject which has been taboo ever since the Welsh-born explorer Henry Morton Stanley secured the rubber and ivory-rich colony for Leopold in 1885.

The investigatory panel, likely to be headed by Professor Jean-Luc Vellut, will start work in the next two months and present its findings in 2004 as part of an exhibition at the museum.

The investigation will be only the first step towards coming to terms with the past.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.