With its cant, corruption and crude anti-Americanism, Belgium’s ruling establishment is one of the more disgusting spectacles to be found on the European continent. Now, its reliably revolting foreign minister, Louis Michel, is scrambling to the defense of his compatriots’ appalling conduct in the Congo a century ago. A new British documentary on the era when the Congo was effectively run as a private gulag for the benefit of Belgium’s King Leopold II has, apparently, angered Michel. The film includes footage of severed hands being carried away by the basketload (maiming was regularly used as a punishment, not only for resistance to Belgian rule, but also for such ‘offenses’ as failing to satisfy the various quotas (notably for delivery of rubber production)) imposed on the Congo’s native inhabitants. According to some estimates, as many as ten million died.

In the Belgian foreign minister’s view the British film “totally ignores the historical, intellectual and cultural context…”

Well, when the sophisticated M. Michel discovers the appropriate “historical, intellectual and cultural context” for understanding genocide, torture, mutilation and atrocity, perhaps he will let the rest of us know.