14 January 2025 13h30-14h00
Johan Massart, M.Sc (Chair of History)
Since 1945, Belgium has participated in a long series of military operations abroad, including peacekeeping and peace-enforcing missions under the auspices of the UN or NATO, but also bilateral or unilateral interventions in for example Africa. While some soldiers died during those missions, there is no collective memory of these operations or conflicts, nor of the soldiers that died. Public awareness of these missions has largely faded, and even when they are remembered, the specific circumstances and the way in which these soldiers died are often forgotten.
Even more concerning is the fact that there is no clear view of how many Belgian military died during these operations. Each year, on the 7th of April, there is a general commemoration where a list of names is read out. However, there are no fixed criteria determining who is included on this list. As a result, the list has been already adjusted more than once.
The Belmilcas Project (Belgian Military Casualties) aims to determine how many Belgian soldiers have died during these military missions since 1945 and to complete the existing list. The project also wants to draw up a biography for each soldier on the list, paying attention to the operational context and clarifying the exact circumstances of their death.
Finally, the project wants to find out how public opinion and politics responded to the loss of life of these soldiers in the past. Did reactions vary depending on the type of mission or the period in which it occurred? Did reactions in the public opinion had any influence on the political response? This webinar will focus on the challenges of defining who could be on the list and determining which missions could be considered. It will also take a deeper look into one of the first and biggest military operations where the Belgian army was involved, namely the Korean War, with a focus on the Belgian soldiers that lost their lives in this conflict.
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