Belgium's chocolate hands leave a bad taste

Antwerp's famed hand-shaped chocolates have triggered a controversy after a story on a website called Karma Colonialism mentioned that the chocolates are a reminder of the cruel deed of cutting off Congo people's hands when Congo was a Belgian colony in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The controversy is not new. The chocolate hands have been sold since 1934, and Antwerp's mayor Bart De Wever explained in April 2021 that they have nothing to do with the hands chopped off in Congo. They are instead the symbol of a local folktale, in which a giant used to cut off hands of those not paying him for crossing a river, until a hero beat him and cut off his hand. Even the name "Antwerp" derives from the Dutch for "throwing away hand".

Any city's past tradition deserves its place in public memory, but the cruel deed of chopping off people's hands during Congo's colonization is more widely known than the legend of Antwerp, just what Sasha Alyson from Karma Colonialism wanted to highlight through her article.