Albert Kunyuku Ngoma was a young Congolese corporal in the colonial Belgian army when he was forced to battle in World War II as far away as Burma, now called Myanmar.
Now 97, Ngoma is one of only two surviving former members of the colonial “Public Force” military living in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) capital, Kinshasa, who are honored in a new documentary titled The Shadow of the Forgotten!
Recalling the battles of six decades ago, Ngoma described fighting side by side with Belgium troops against the Japanese in Burma.
Photo: AFP
“In the trenches in Burma, we saw Belgian officers fall to enemy bullets,” Ngoma said. “It was a real shock for us.”
The Public Force was formed as a military unit when Belgian King Leopold II controlled the colony. Thousands of Congolese were drafted as part of the colonial armed forces, and fought during World War II in east Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Dressed in their worn-out former uniforms, Ngoma and his former brother-in-arms Daniel Miuki, 94, were praised as “living monuments” of Congolese history at a recent showing of the documentary by academic Jose Adolphe Voto.
In the film, they are shown proudly wearing their campaign medals on their chests as they recalled details of their postings from Leopoldville, as Kinshasa was once known, to the Middle East and to Burma, a British colony invaded by the Japanese during the war.
Caps on their heads and canes in hand, two men leafed together through a yellowed photograph album from Miuki’s home showing pictures dating from 1940 to 1945.
US soldiers were not great shots, they said, but they praised the combat skills of the Japanese, Chinese and Korean soldiers on the ground.
Both remember the racial segregation they had to face even as they fought shoulder to shoulder with the Belgians.
“We were like slaves, because it was Belgium that brought us into this war. We could not say anything,” Ngoma said.
“When the bombs began to fall, white and black would die the same way,” said Miuki, a former infantry nurse.
As Belgium’s prime minister visited the DR Congo this week, Miuki criticized what he called the “ungrateful” attitude of the former colonial ruler towards its Congolese ex-soldiers, saying they were tossed aside “like dirty towels.”
“France still takes care of Second World War veterans from its former colonies, and their heirs,” Ngoma said.
Congolese soldiers never received any compensation from the countries for whom they fought in 1940 to 1945, said a complaint filed in 2018 in the DR Congo by seven children of ex-combatants from the Public Force.
They accuse the former colonial power, as well as France, Britain and the US, of neglecting their parents and claimed more than US$7 million, the Belgian Ministry of Defense said.
The case was in court late last year, but no judgement has been made.
“I wanted to pay tribute to those who gave their all, not only for the Congo but in the world war,” Voto said. “I wanted them to be rewarded morally. When I spoke with them, I was disappointed to learn that they have never been recognized by Belgium.”
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress