The Chat of Ambassador
Belgium and “Congo Free State” (No.9)
22nd February, 2013
A local newspaper reported the other day in a front page article about harassment at the workplace. The headline said “6 months’ salary for harassment”, which intrigued me. According to this article, an amendment bill is now being prepared under the Minister of Employment to make the harasser pay an amount equivalent to maximum 6 months of salary to the victim as a punishment and the Minister is expected to put the amendment bill on the Parliament’s agenda. Moreover, this amendment will expand the scope of the harassment law: it will include all psychosocial problems at the workplace and it will look at the cause of psychological damage such as for example stress, strained relations, trouble with personnel affairs and even the atmosphere at the workplace. The victim does not need to establish proof of the harm caused, simply revealing the facts is enough. Companies are obliged to take the necessary precautionary measures. On the other hand, 657 harassment complaints were filed with the Directorate General Control of Well-being at the Workplace, which is a decrease of 215 cases compared to the previous year. Furthermore, most of them were moral harassment cases (sexual harassment was only 5 %). The background of this amendment bill now is that, according to recent OECD statistics, the rate of those suffering from mental troubles among the unemployed is extremely high in Belgium (18%) compared to other developed countries. In the case of Belgium, a special allocation is provided in case of unemployment due to invalidity and mental and physical disorders. In 30% of the cases, the cause of this invalidity and mental and physical disorders is a mental disability. The public finance burden is too heavy (3, 4 % of GDP) and the government has no choice but to tackle moral harassment in all earnest.
< First Attendance of the European Ambassadors’ Meeting >
In the beginning of this week, the “European Ambassadors’ Meeting”, which brings together all Japanese Ambassadors posted in Europe, was held in Tokyo. Having taken up my post in October last year, I attended this meeting for the first time. Even though it was only a two and a half day meeting, 40 Ambassadors enthusiastically discussed the way to conduct future European diplomacy based on each country’s situation. In the chaotic state of the world, especially the importance of the relationship with Europe with whom we share the same values such as freedom, democracy and rule of law was commonly recognized upon clarifying Japan’s standpoint. Further, we shared information and had discussions on the future energy policy and on how to proceed with the Japan-EU EPA negotiations. I pointed out the importance of the Japan-Europe dialogue in the field of security including the relationship with NATO. In addition, we met with Prime Minister Abe and Foreign Minister Kishida and received clear instructions. Not much time has passed since I was appointed here, so I think that I have received valuable guidance for my future work in Belgium.
< Interaction with Belgian politicians >
In the past month I have had the opportunity to communicate with many national and local Belgian politicians. The first one was Mr. Michel Foret, Governor of the Province of Liège. As mentioned in the previous “Ambassador’s Chat”, Liège is a center city of Wallonia, located 100 km east of Brussels. Historically, Liège emerged as one of the principalities belonging to the German Holy Roman Empire in the 10th century and has been semi-independent as a Prince-Bishopric for about 800 years before being swallowed up by the French revolution at the end of the 18th century. Mr. Foret welcomed me in formal dress in a 16th-century building that used to be the palace of the Prince-Bishop. The decorative stone architecture surrounding the courtyard was magnificent. The Governor belongs to MR (Liberal party of Wallonia, the French language region). He has worked as a Member of the House of Representatives and as a Senator and has been in his current position for more than 8 years. Belgian provincial governors are appointed for life by the King. In practice though, many governors step down halfway because of health reasons, etc., but even globally a gubernatorial appointment for life is unusual.
The next person I met was Olivier Destrebecq, Member of the House of Representatives and also echevin at La Louvière (78.000 inhabitants), located 50 km to the south of Brussels. Having practiced judo for about 20 years, he continued to be interested in Japan. We had a meeting for nearly two hours over the lunch table and we discussed a wide range of topics from the current state of reconstruction from the Great East Japan Earthquake to Japan’s recent economic policy. As echevin, he is committed to attract foreign investments and he would like to have the opportunity to meet with Japanese company representatives. I promised to cooperate.
Lastly, I had lunch with Ms. Zoe Genot, Member of the House of Representatives and member of the Walloon Green party (ECOLO). Ms. Genot is a female politician in the electoral district of Brussels and has been working as a Member of Parliament for over 10 years since she was 25 years old. Currently she is a member of the Japan-Belgium Parliamentary Friendship League, but she also holds several positions as the representative of minor parties, such as Chairwoman of the Morocco-Belgium Parliamentary Friendship League and Vice Chairwoman of the Turkey-Belgium Parliamentary Friendship League. I had mixed feelings about her frank opinion that the Japan-Belgium Parliamentary Friendship League is not active because there are no particular problems with Japan.
< Barbed Wire Arising from Cattle Disputes >
If you drive about 90 km on the highway towards the west of Brussels, you will reach Kortrijk (75.000 inhabitants), one of the central cities in West Flanders. To the east, across the highway, on the exact opposite side, is a small town named Zwevegem (24.000 inhabitants). At a first glance, it is an ordinary rural village surrounded by vast fields for as far as you can see on the horizon, but it is well known among the Belgians as the birthplace of the great industrialist Leo-Leander Bekaert and the founding place of the Bekaert business, about 130 years ago, in the early days of the Meiji era in Japan.
Mr. Bekaert was born in 1855 in Zwevegem, which had not even 1000 inhabitants at the time, as the only son of a hardware store owner. At the age of 13 years, he lost his father and the young boy took over the store. When he was 24 years old, he got caught up in boundary disputes between neighboring farmers, whose livestock grazed beyond their own boundaries. He settled the disputes by enclosing each area with barbed wire, so the cattle did not eat the neighbor’s grass anymore. Barbed wire is common today, but in those days it was a great invention which sold like crazy and the 25-year old young man started to mass-produce barbed wire in his factory. Today in the 21st century, “Bekaert” has grown into one of Belgium’s leading big companies, boasting a large share worldwide in the production of steel cords and metal wires. According to corporate data, total sales amount to 4.6 billion euros and the total number of workers is as high as 27.000 in 2011 in 120 countries. The Tokyo branch was founded in 1971 and there are factories in Ibaraki and Saitama prefecture. It is just barbed wire. But still…!
< The odious History of “The Congo Free State >
The small town of Tervuren with a population of 21.000 people is located about 14km to the southeast of Brussels. The Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, which was built at the beginning of the 20th century, has become a huge permanent exhibition site for getting to know the situation of Africa in those days, with a focus on Belgian Congo. However, what caught my eye when I visited the museum the other day, was not the African folk art and life styles, nor the animal life, but a small corner showing the harshness of Belgian colonial rule at the end of the 19th century. King Leopold II of Belgium, carrying a massive debt due to the successive construction of gigantic structures, ordered to enhance the collection of rubber in his privately owned “Congo Free State” (current Democratic Republic of Congo) and sacrificed a great number of local people by forcing to do so. Wanting to know how things were under Belgian colonial rule, I ordered the novel “Heart of Darkness” (Japanese translation) written by the British author Joseph Conrad at the end of the 19th century. I read it at once. This novel is the source for the Hollywood film “Apocalypse Now” directed by Francis Ford Coppola more than 30 years ago. Although the film adaptation was set in Vietnam, the original story is about the African “Congo Free State” being colonized by Belgium. The plot of the story is as follows: one of the main characters lives deep in the wilderness, is worshipped as a god by the natives and collects ivory to be sent to Belgium. Also, at the beginning of the 20th century, the British journalist E.D. Morel wrote a novel called “Red Rubber”, describing the unheard-of tyranny, exploitation and massacre in the Congo. International condemnation followed, which seems to have led to the transfer of authority by Leopold II to the Belgian government (1908). In fact, mainly ivory and rubber were collected at the end of the 19th century in Congo. For that collection, natives were forced to work and were punished atrociously. Supposedly, several million people died. Every country’s history has a black page with incidents that one does not want to remember. For Belgium, I think one of those incidents took place at the end of the 19th century in the former colony Congo. However, I felt a conscience of the modern Belgian in the fact that a corner has been set up in the museum to show part of the facts.