Reappearance of statue`s missing hand reignites colonial row
(The Guardian Belgium)

Bronze hand from statue of Congolese man reappears briefly, as `activist vandals´ emerge from shadows in BelgiumA mysterious act of vandalism and theft that has perplexed Belgian detectives for 15 years has come a little closer to being resolved - and helped ignite a renewed and growing debate over the country´s bloody colonial history.In the dead of an April night in 2004, a bronze statue overlooking Ostend´s seafront of a Congolese man gazing up at a horse-mounted King Leopold II was attacked with a hacksaw. The left hand of the slave was removed, in a reference to a common punishment meted out to Congo´s population during the Belgian monarch´s reign in the late 19th century. Continue reading...