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vintagecongo:
Picture take in Congo Free State: I have seen this picture being reblogged by so many people on the site without people knowing his name or what happened to him and his family. His name was Nsala from Wala in the Nsongo District. Congo Free State, what we now cal Democratic Republic of Congo was owned by King Leopold of Belgium, it was given to him at the Berlin Conference. The whole country was essentially turned into a slave plantation and one of the things people had to do was mine for rubber. If a person didn’t meet the rubber quota, them and their family would be severely punished and one of the punishments was mutilation… A Catholic priest quote a man called Tswambe, speaking of the hated state official Léon Fiévez “Rubber causes these torments; that’s why we no longer want to hear its name spoken. Soldiers made young men kill or rape their own mothers and sisters…The European officer in command ‘ordered us to cut off the heads of the men and hang them on the village palisades … and to hang the women and the children on the palisade in the form of a cross.” Nsala didn’t meet the rubber quota so as, punishment his wife, daughter and son were killed, cut up into pieces and boiled and only the remaining foot and hand of his five year old daughter was returned to him (according to accounts)
From 1885 to 1908 Belgians estimated that half of Congo’s population had halved and over 10 million people died (statistics vary from 12-22 million) the Belgians were not the only ones who contributed to this death toll and torture. Omani Arab and Swahili people (Waswahili) from Zanzibar were also responsible for the Congolese genocide.
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