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From Congo to Rwanda and Burundi, there have been stories of children who were abducted from their maternal families by the Belgian government with the complicity of the church and placed in convents.

But Belgium is not the only country with this history. Japan has a history of killing babies as a means of population control. This practice is known as Mabiki, an agricultural term which originally meant “thinning out.”

Aside from colonizing Africa for her resources, one of the little-known aspects of colonisation is the systematic abduction and infanticide of biracial children. The countries of their paternal families weren't ready to repatriate them, so they devised a better option which was to kill them or put them away. 

The Democratic Republic of Congo is by far the richest producer of cobalt and copper accounting for roughly 70 per cent of global production. In the 1970s the plant in Katanga produced 5000 tonnes of copper a day. 

For ten years beginning in the 1970s, the Japanese government sent miners who took turns to mine copper and cobalt in the mineral-rich southeastern region of Katanga Province in DRC. 

Most of these men had families in Japan, and since Japan wasn't ready to repatriate any biracial child, the men were forbidden from getting intimate with the native women. 

To effect this policy, the miners were confined in a strict camp. 

To watch the full story on YouTube, click on the image above or continue reading.

Any of them who dared to bring in a woman was automatically deported to Japan.

But this didn't deter the men from seeking social interactions outside the camp, with time some beautiful Congolese girls caught the attention of these lonely men.

Over time, the Japanese men started having sexual relations and cohabiting with these native women and impregnated them. 

Everything seemed to go well until something sinister began to occur: the biracial infants of these unions started dying shortly after they were birthed 

In 2010, France 24's reporters;  Arnaud Zajtman and Marlène Rabaud met the mothers of the dead mixed-race babies and the survivors of the Katanga Infanticide 

The mothers of these dead babies had one thing in common, they all visited the local mining hospital which was led by Japanese Physicians and Nurses. 

When the news of the death of these babies spread across the province, the other mothers who were pregnant for the Japanese miners went into hiding. 

A very touching story was that of a  woman named Yvonne whose Japanese mixed-race baby died mysteriously. Yvonne took the reporters to her home where she told them more about her dead child and her ordeals

He was buried at Calama not too far away, she said. 

Like other mothers, Yvonne took her son to the hospital with his father. On getting there a Japanese doctor took her child from her and went inside to where his friends were. 

She stayed outside while they talked to each other. When they came out,  they handed her baby back to her and she left. 

The next day, her child died.

Another woman narrated how she left her baby with his father to get water. When she returned, her child was weak, so she took her child to the hospital where he died. 

There are many stories like this, and the mothers believe that the camp doctors and their baby's fathers conspired to kill their babies. 

The graves of mixed-race children can still be found in Katanga. 

Today, there are fifty Afro-Japanese survivors of the infanticide who grew up hidden, many years later, they came together to form an association and hired a legal counsel seeking a formal investigation into the killings. 

The association submitted official inquiries to both the Congolese and Japanese governments all to no avail; Japan is yet to respond to the Congolese government's requests. 

These survivors have no birth certificates because they were born outside of a hospital, they have received no citizenship, compensation or recognition from the Japanese government nor has the Japanese government listened to or apologized to them or their mothers. 

Over 40 years later, Justice is yet to be served. 

What's your opinion on this? 

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Credit 

Dreamwaterchildren 

France2

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