{"id":31768,"date":"2026-08-07T09:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T09:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/31768\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T09:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T09:12:11","slug":"antwerps-human-zoo-belgium-confronts-shame-of-colonial-past-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/31768\/","title":{"rendered":"Antwerp&#8217;s &#8216;human zoo&#8217;: Belgium confronts shame of colonial past &#8211; Focus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n                                        In 1894, when the Belgian city of Antwerp was hosting a World&#8217;s Fair, 144 Congolese people were forcibly brought to the city to be exhibited in the Congo Pavilion. In this &#8220;human\u00a0zoo&#8221;, seven Congolese men ultimately died of disease.\u00a0Today, this shocking episode still haunts Belgium as one of its colonial history&#8217;s darkest chapters.                <\/p>\n<p>But in May of this year, the city of Antwerp began to confront this painful past by heeding demands from its\u00a0<a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/tag\/dr-congo\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Congolese<\/a> community by unveiling a monument to the victims. It&#8217;s a way to confront the demons of the wealthy <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/tag\/belgium\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Belgian<\/a> port city that greatly benefitted from the colonial period. FRANCE 24&#8217;s Alix Le Bourdon reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1894, when the Belgian city of Antwerp was hosting a World&#8217;s Fair, 144 Congolese people were forcibly&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[6],"tags":[19,7,4771,4872,69,14847,5276],"class_list":["post-31768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-antwerp","tag-antwerp","tag-belgium","tag-colonialism","tag-dr-congo","tag-europe","tag-focus","tag-history"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/117053459411830238","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}