King Philippe of Belgium (center) wears a protective mask as he arrives to observe COVID-19 testing for Belgian defense forces, in Marche-en-Famenne, on Tuesday. Photo: AFP

Belgium's King Philippe landed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Tuesday, in a historic visit to the central African country his ancestor once ruled brutally as his personal fief.  

The monarch will undertake a six-day trip billed as a chance for reconciliation after atrocities committed under Belgian colonial rule.  

The visit comes two years after Philippe wrote to Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi to express his "deepest regrets" for the "wounds of the past."

Tshisekedi and his wife greeted King Philippe and Queen Mathilde on a red carpet rolled out on the tarmac of the international airport of the capital Kinshasa, a sprawling city of about 15 million people.  

On Monday, Congolese government spokesman Patrick Muyaya told reporters that Belgium and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) were starting a "new partnership." 

"We are not forgetting the past, we are looking to the future," he added. 

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo, who is visiting the impoverished nation of 90 million people alongside the king, echoed the sentiment. 

"It's a historic moment," he told a Belgian national broadcaster Tuesday, hailing the opportunity to forge future closer ties.

Belgium's colonization of the Congo was one of the harshest imposed by the European powers that ruled most of Africa in the late 19th and 20th centuries. King Leopold II, brother of Philippe's great great grandfather, oversaw the conquest of what is now DRC, governing the territory as his personal property between 1885 and 1908 before it became a Belgian colony. 

AFP