![]() ![]() ![]() Sometimes the hands were collected by the soldiers of the Force Publique, sometimes by the villages themselves. Meanwhile, the Force Publique (the gendarmerie / military force) was required to provide the hand of their victims as proof when they had shot and killed someone, as it was believed that they would otherwise use the munitions (imported from Europe at considerable cost) for hunting.Īs a consequence, the rubber quotas were in part paid off in chopped-off hands. However, this came at a cost to the human rights of those who couldn’t pay the tax with imprisonment, flogging, and other corporal punishment recorded.īritish missionaries with men holding hands severed from victims Bolenge and Lingomo by ABIR militiamen, 1904.įailure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. ABIR enjoyed a boom through the late 1890s, by selling a kilogram of rubber in Europe for up to 10 fr which had cost them just 1.35 fr. Last hope barbershop free#The ABIR Congo Company (founded as the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company and later known as the Compagnie du Congo Belge) was the company appointed to exploit natural rubber in the Congo Free State. Under Leopold II’s administration, the Congo Free State became one of the greatest international scandals of the early 20th century. The ironic part of this story is that Leopold II committed these atrocities by not even setting foot in the Congo. In the 23 years (1885-1908) Leopold II ruled the Congo he massacred 10 million Africans by cutting off their hands and genitals, flogging them to death, starving them into forced labor, holding children ransom, and burning villages. ![]() The Congo Free State was a corporate state in Central Africa privately owned by King Leopold II of Belgium founded and recognized by the Berlin Conference of 1885. Leopold had not given any thought to the idea that these African children, these men, and women, were our fully human brothers, created equally by the same Hand that had created his own lineage of European Royalty. All of this filth had occurred because one man, one man who lived thousands of miles across the sea, one man who couldn’t get rich enough, had decreed that this land was his and that these people should serve his own greed. They had partially destroyed it anyway by forcing his servitude but this act finished it for him. And they presented Nsala with the tokens, the leftovers from the once living body of his darling child whom he so loved. Then they killed his wife too.Īnd because that didn’t seem quite cruel enough, quite strong enough to make their case, they cannibalized both Boali and her mother. Here is part of her account (from the book “Don’t Call Me Lady: The Journey of Lady Alice Seeley Harris”): He hadn’t made his rubber quota for the day so the Belgian-appointed overseers had cut off his daughter’s hand and foot. The photograph is by Alice Seeley Harris, the man’s name is Nsala. A Congolese man looking at the severed hand and foot of his five-year-old daughter who was killed, and allegedly cannibalized, by the members of Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company militia. ![]()
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