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#Post#: 323--------------------------------------------------
Belgian Colonialism in the Congo
By: guest5 Date: July 15, 2020, 10:48 am
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Belgian Princess Condemns Her Family’s Brutal Colonial History
in Congo & Calls For Reparations
[quote]Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S. have sparked a
reckoning about racism and colonialism across the world,
including in Belgium, where a growing movement is demanding the
country address systemic racism and make amends for its violent
colonial legacy. King Philippe issued an unprecedented statement
“expressing regret” for Belgium’s brutal colonial rule in Congo
under Leopold II, who ran the country as his personal fiefdom
and under whose command millions of Congolese were enslaved and
killed. “It’s an erased history,” says Belgo-Congolese
journalist and activist Gia Abrassart. We also speak with
Princess Esméralda, a member of the Belgian royal family and
great-grandniece of Leopold II, who says the country has taken
an important first step, but adds that “we have to go much
farther.”[/quote]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3Z69633IcQ
#Post#: 324--------------------------------------------------
Re: Belgian Colonialism in the Congo
By: 90sRetroFan Date: July 15, 2020, 2:56 pm
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If Esmeralda were sincere, she would at least have voluntarily
refrained from reproducing since she knows she is from a racist
bloodline. She did not.
[quote]“we have to go much farther.”[/quote]
No kidding. All racist bloodlines must be eliminated.
HTML https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Belgian_colonial_empire.png/800px-Belgian_colonial_empire.png
NEVER FORGIVE. NEVER FORGET.
#Post#: 1963--------------------------------------------------
Re: Belgian Colonialism in the Congo
By: guest5 Date: November 3, 2020, 11:57 pm
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Leopold II of Belgium: The Biggest Coverup In European History
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTq6Hhkpw2s
King Leopold II Killed 8-10 Million People | Hotboxin with Mike
Tyson
[quote]Mike Tyson talks about King Leopold II killing millions
of people with Justin Wren. [/quote]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydk7oBsZyxk
#Post#: 2075--------------------------------------------------
Re: Belgian Colonialism in the Congo
By: guest5 Date: November 8, 2020, 4:09 pm
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When Belgium committed a holocaust in Africa
[quote]This is how the story of Leopold’s regime colonised,
exploited, murdered, enslaved, and maimed the people of the
Congo and how Brussels’ dark colonial past is catching up to it
today.[/quote]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuGF7g_8RJE
[quote]Iso-Kayra
2 days ago
And Europe cries when people from Africa come to their countries
[/quote]
[quote]
simon0802
2 days ago
Europeans have never done any good for Africans!! [/quote]
[quote]Hamaka Labaka
2 days ago
Antwerp in Belgium is the world capital of diamonds ... stolen
in Africa! [/quote]
[quote]
Warrior Race
2 days ago (edited)
European colonialism in Africa... [/quote]
[quote]
WolveZOid
2 days ago
Interest is destroying Africa and they are STILL being looted
today imo [/quote]
[quote]99 HAK
2 days ago (edited)
1943 4 Million Bengals were killed by Churchill. You won't hear
that in history. [/quote]
[quote]
Sindabad
2 days ago
This was [JUDEO]Cristian terrorism in Africa [/quote]
[quote]
No comment
2 days ago (edited)
Lol.. I thought [JUDEO]Christian is a peace loving people ..smh
[/quote]
[quote]Emperor YT
2 days ago
And these countries lecture us about humanity, freedom and
democracy[/quote]
Judging from the comments I think it's safe to say people have
had enough with the constant bullshit coming from the West and
out of ignorant western mouths and minds.
#Post#: 2114--------------------------------------------------
Re: Belgian Colonialism in the Congo
By: guest5 Date: November 10, 2020, 10:50 pm
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King Leopold's ghost still haunts the Congo
[quote]The #Congo's natural resources have inspired a most
unnatural history of greed and violence, which cost the lives of
some 10 million.[/quote]
[quote]In the heart of Africa lies a country called the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is a vast place with lush
forests, vigorous rivers, and incredible riches such as gold,
timber, uranium, cobalt, diamond, etc. These natural resources
have inspired a most unnatural history of greed and violence.
For over a century, the Congo has been haunted by the memories
of its past. While other African nations have come to terms with
a history of exploitation and colonisation, the Congo continues
to relive the unshakable legacy of one man - King Leopold II of
Belgium, whose ventures cost the lives of some 10
million.[/quote]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alg33ey4ejo
#Post#: 5011--------------------------------------------------
Re: Belgian Colonialism in the Congo
By: 90sRetroFan Date: March 20, 2021, 10:55 pm
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OLD CONTENT
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State
[quote]In 1876 Leopold II of Belgium hosted a geographic
conference in Brussels, inviting famous explorers,
philanthropists, and members of geographic societies to stir up
interest in a "humanitarian" endeavor for Europeans to take in
central Africa to "improve" and "civilize" the lives of the
indigenous peoples.[11] At the conference, Leopold organized the
International African Association with the cooperation of
European and American explorers and the support of several
European governments, and was himself elected chairman. Leopold
used the association to promote plans to seize independent
central Africa under this philanthropic guise.
...
While exploring the Congo for Leopold, Stanley set up treaties
with the local chiefs and with native leaders.[13] Few to none
of these tribal leaders had a realistic idea of what they were
signing, and, in essence, the documents gave over all rights of
their respective pieces of land to King Leopold II. With
Stanley's help, Leopold was able to claim a great area along the
Congo River, and military posts were established.
Christian de Bonchamps, a French explorer who served Leopold in
Katanga, expressed attitudes towards such treaties shared by
many Europeans, saying, "The treaties with these little African
tyrants, which generally consist of four long pages of which
they do not understand a word, and to which they sign a cross in
order to have peace and to receive gifts, are really only
serious matters for the European powers, in the event of
disputes over the territories. They do not concern the black
sovereign who signs them for a moment."[14]
...
"I do not want to risk ... losing a fine chance to secure for
ourselves a slice of this magnificent African cake."
King Leopold II, to an aide in London
...
Leopold no longer needed the façade of the association, and
replaced it with an appointed cabinet of Belgians who would do
his bidding. To the temporary new capital of Boma, he sent a
governor-general and a chief of police. The vast Congo basin was
split up into 14 administrative districts, each district into
zones, each zone into sectors, and each sector into posts. From
the district commissioners down to post level, every appointed
head was European. However, with little financial means the Free
State mainly relied on local elites to rule and tax the vast and
hard-to-reach Congolese interior.[24]
...
The first change was the introduction of the concept of terres
vacantes, "vacant" land, which was any land that did not contain
a habitation or a cultivated garden plot. All of this land
(i.e., most of the country) was therefore deemed to belong to
the state. Servants of the state (namely any men in Leopold's
employ) were encouraged to exploit it.
Shortly after the anti-slavery conference he held in Brussels in
1889, Leopold issued a new decree which said that Africans could
only sell their harvested products (mostly ivory and rubber) to
the state in a large part of the Free State. This law grew out
of the earlier decree which had said that all "unoccupied" land
belonged to the state. Any ivory or rubber collected from the
state-owned land, the reasoning went, must belong to the state;
creating a de facto state-controlled monopoly. Suddenly, the
only outlet a large share of the local population had for their
products was the state, which could set purchase prices and
therefore could control the amount of income the Congolese could
receive for their work.
...
A decree in 1892 divided the terres vacantes into a domainal
system, which privatized extraction rights over rubber for the
state in certain private domains, allowing Leopold to grant vast
concessions to private companies. In other areas, private
companies could continue to trade but were highly restricted and
taxed. The domainal system enforced an in-kind tax on the Free
State's Congolese subjects. As essential intermediaries, local
rulers forced their men, women and children to collect rubber,
ivory and foodstuffs. Depending on the power of local rulers,
the Free State paid below rising market prices.[30] In October
1892, Leopold granted concessions to a number of companies. Each
company was given a large amount of land in the Congo Free State
on which to collect rubber and ivory for sale in Europe. These
companies were allowed to detain Africans who did not work hard
enough, to police their vast areas as they saw fit and to take
all the products of the forest for themselves. In return for
their concessions, these companies paid an annual dividend to
the Free State. At the height of the rubber boom, from 1901
until 1906, these dividends also filled the royal coffers.[31]
The Free Trade Zone in the Congo was open to entrepreneurs of
any European nation, who were allowed to buy 10- and 15-year
monopoly leases on anything of value: ivory from a district or
the rubber concession, for example. The other zone—almost
two-thirds of the Congo—became the Domaine Privé, the exclusive
private property of the state.
In 1893, Leopold excised the most readily accessible 259,000 km2
(100,000 sq mi) portion of the Free Trade Zone and declared it
to be the Domaine de la Couronne, literally, "fief of the
crown". Rubber revenue went directly to Leopold who paid the
Free State for the high costs of exploitation.[32] The same
rules applied as in the Domaine Privé.[27] In 1896 global demand
for rubber soared. From that year onwards, the Congolese rubber
sector started to generate vast sums of money at an immense cost
for the local population.[33]
...
After widespread criticism, this "primes system" was substituted
for the allocation de retraite in which a large part of the
payment was granted, at the end of the service, only to those
territorial agents and magistrates whose conduct was judged
"satisfactory" by their superiors. This meant in practice that
nothing changed. Congolese communities in the Domaine Privé were
not merely forbidden by law to sell items to anyone but the
state; they were required to provide state officials with set
quotas of rubber and ivory at a fixed, government-mandated price
and to provide food to the local post.[43][/quote]
What "anti-slavery" means in Western civilization.....
[quote]In direct violation of his promises of free trade within
the CFS under the terms of the Berlin Treaty, not only had the
state become a commercial entity directly or indirectly trading
within its dominion, but also, Leopold had been slowly
monopolizing a considerable amount of the ivory and rubber trade
by imposing export duties on the resources traded by other
merchants within the CFS.[/quote]
[quote]Prices increased throughout the decade as industries
discovered new uses for rubber in tires, hoses, tubing,
insulation for telegraph and telephone cables and wiring. By the
late-1890s, wild rubber had far surpassed ivory as the main
source of revenue from the Congo Free State. The peak year was
1903, with rubber fetching the highest price and concessionary
companies raking in the highest profits.
However, the boom sparked efforts to find lower-cost producers.
Congolese concessionary companies started facing competition
from rubber cultivation in Southeast Asia and Latin America. As
plantations were begun in other tropical areas—mostly under the
ownership of the rival British firms—world rubber prices started
to dip. Competition heightened the drive to exploit forced
labour in the Congo in order to lower production costs.[/quote]
[quote]By the final decade of the 19th century, John Boyd
Dunlop’s 1887 invention of inflatable, rubber bicycle tubes and
the growing popularity of the automobile dramatically increased
global demand for rubber. To monopolize the resources of the
entire Congo Free State, Leopold issued three decrees in 1891
and 1892 that reduced the native population to serfs.
Collectively, these forced the natives to deliver all ivory and
rubber, harvested or found, to state officers thus nearly
completing Leopold's monopoly of the ivory and rubber trade. The
rubber came from wild vines in the jungle, unlike the rubber
from Brazil (Hevea brasiliensis), which was tapped from trees.
To extract the rubber, instead of tapping the vines, the
Congolese workers would slash them and lather their bodies with
the rubber latex. When the latex hardened, it would be scraped
off the skin in a painful manner, as it took off the worker's
hair with it.[44]
...
The Force Publique (FP), Leopold's private army, was used to
enforce the rubber quotas. Early on, the FP was used primarily
to campaign against the Arab slave trade in the Upper Congo,
protect Leopold's economic interests, and suppress the frequent
uprisings within the state. The Force Publique's officer corps
included only white Europeans (Belgian regular soldiers and
mercenaries from other countries). On arriving in the Congo,
these recruited men from Zanzibar and west Africa, and
eventually from the Congo itself. In addition, Leopold had been
actually encouraging the slave trade among Arabs in the Upper
Congo in return for slaves to fill the ranks of the FP. During
the 1890s, the FP's primary role was to exploit the natives as
corvée laborers to promote the rubber trade.[/quote]
More "anti-slavery" by Western civilization.....
[quote]Many of the black soldiers were from far-off peoples of
the Upper Congo, while others had been kidnapped in raids on
villages in their childhood and brought to Roman Catholic
missions, where they received a military training in conditions
close to slavery. Armed with modern weapons and the chicotte—a
bull whip made of hippopotamus hide—the Force Publique routinely
took and tortured hostages, slaughtered families of rebels, and
flogged and raped Congolese people with a reign of terror and
abuse that cost millions of lives. One refugee from these
horrors described the process:
We were always in the forest to find the rubber vines, to go
without food, and our women had to give up cultivating the
fields and gardens. Then we starved.... When we failed and our
rubber was short, the soldiers came to our towns and killed us.
Many were shot, some had their ears cut off; others were tied up
with ropes round their necks and taken away.[45]
They also burned recalcitrant villages, and above all, cut off
the hands of Congolese natives, including children. The human
hands were collected as trophies on the orders of their officers
to show that bullets had not been wasted. Officers were
concerned that their subordinates might waste their ammunition
on hunting animals for sport, so they required soldiers to
submit one hand for every bullet spent.[46] These mutilations
also served to further terrorize the Congolese into submission.
This was all contrary to the promises of uplift made at the
Berlin Conference which had recognized the Congo Free State.
...
A reduction of the population of the Congo is noted by all who
have compared the country at the beginning of Leopold's control
with the beginning of Belgian state rule in 1908, but estimates
of the death toll vary considerably. Estimates of some
contemporary observers suggest that the population decreased by
half during this period. According to Edmund D. Morel, the Congo
Free State counted "20 million souls".[51] Hence, Mark Twain
mentioned the number of ten million deaths.[52] According to
British diplomat Roger Casement, this depopulation had four main
causes: "indiscriminate war", starvation, reduction of births,
and disease.[53] Sleeping sickness was also a major cause of
fatality at the time. Opponents of Leopold's rule stated,
however, that the administration itself was to be considered
responsible for the spreading of the epidemic.[54]
In the absence of a census providing even an initial idea of the
size of population of the region at the inception of the Congo
Free State (the first was taken in 1924),[55] it is impossible
to quantify population changes in the period. Despite this,
Forbath more recently claimed the loss was at least five
million.[56] Adam Hochschild and Jan Vansina use the number 10
million. Hochschild cites several recent independent lines of
investigation, by anthropologist Jan Vansina and others, that
examine local sources (police records, religious records, oral
traditions, genealogies, personal diaries), which generally
agree with the assessment of the 1919 Belgian government
commission: roughly half the population perished during the Free
State period. Since the first official census by the Belgian
authorities in 1924 put the population at about 10 million,
these various approaches suggest a rough estimate of a total of
10 million dead.[57] Jan Vansina returned to the issue of
quantifying the total population decline, and revised his
earlier position, he concluded that the Kuba population (one of
the many Congolese populations) was rising during the first two
decades of Leopold II's rule, and declined with 25 percent from
1900 to 1919, mainly due to sickness.[58][59][60] Others argued
a decrease of 20 percent over the first forty years of colonial
rule (up to the census of 1924).[61] According to the Congolese
historian Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem 13 million died.[62] To put
these population changes in context, sourced references state
that in 1900 Africa as a whole had between 90 million[63] and
133 million people.[64][/quote]
#Post#: 5012--------------------------------------------------
Re: Belgian Colonialism in the Congo
By: 90sRetroFan Date: March 20, 2021, 10:56 pm
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OLD CONTENT contd.
More details on a separate page:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State
[quote]Between 1891 and 1906, the companies were allowed to do
whatever they wished with almost no judicial interference, the
result being that forced labour and violent coercion were used
to collect the rubber cheaply and maximise profit. A native
paramilitary army, the Force Publique, was also created to
enforce the labour policies. Individual workers who refused to
participate in rubber collection could be killed and entire
villages razed. Individual white administrators were also free
to indulge their own sadism.
...
With the majority of the Free State's revenues derived from the
export of rubber, a labour policy (known by critics as the "Red
Rubber system") was created to maximise its extraction. Labour
was demanded by the administration as taxation. This created a
"slave society" as companies became increasingly dependent on
forcibly mobilising Congolese labour for their collection of
rubber.[22] The state recruited a number of black officials,
known as capitas, to organise local labour.[22] However, the
desire to maximise rubber collection, and hence the state's
profits, meant that the centrally enforced demands were often
set arbitrarily without considering the numbers or the welfare
of workers.[21] In the concessionary territories, the private
companies which had purchased a concession from the Free State
administration were able to use virtually any measures they
wished to increase production and profits without state
interference.[12] The lack of a developed bureaucracy to oversee
any commercial methods produced an atmosphere of "informality"
throughout the state in regards to the operation of enterprises,
which in turn facilitated abuses.[23] Treatment of labourers
(especially the duration of service) was not regulated by law
and instead was left to the discretion of officials on the
ground.[21] ABIR and the Anversoise were particularly noted for
the harshness with which officials treated Congolese workers.
The historian Jean Stengers described regions controlled by
these two companies as "veritable hells-on-earth".[24]
Workers who refused to supply their labour were coerced with
"constraint and repression". Dissenters were beaten or whipped
with the chicotte, hostages were taken to ensure prompt
collection and punitive expeditions were sent to destroy
villages which refused.[21] The policy led to a collapse of
Congolese economic and cultural life, as well as farming in some
areas.[25] Much of the enforcement of rubber production was the
responsibility of the Force Publique, the colonial military. The
Force had originally been established in 1885, with white
officers and NCOs and black soldiers, and recruited from as far
afield as Zanzibar, Nigeria, and Liberia.[26]
...
Failure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by
death. Meanwhile, the Force Publique were 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.[46] As a consequence, the rubber quotas were in part
paid off in chopped-off hands. Sometimes the hands were
collected by the soldiers of the Force Publique, sometimes by
the villages themselves. There were even small wars where
villages attacked neighboring villages to gather hands, since
their rubber quotas were too unrealistic to fill. A Catholic
priest quotes a man, Tswambe, speaking of the hated state
official Léon Fiévez, who ran a district along the river 500
kilometres (300 mi) north of Stanley Pool:
All blacks saw this man as the devil of the Equator ... From all
the bodies killed in the field, you had to cut off the hands. He
wanted to see the number of hands cut off by each soldier, who
had to bring them in baskets ... A village which refused to
provide rubber would be completely swept clean. As a young man,
I saw [Fiévez's] soldier Molili, then guarding the village of
Boyeka, take a net, put ten arrested natives in it, attach big
stones to the net, and make it tumble into the river ... 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.[47]
One junior officer described a raid to punish a village that had
protested. The 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".[48] After seeing a Congolese person killed for the
first time, a Danish missionary wrote, "The soldier said 'Don't
take this to heart so much. They kill us if we don't bring the
rubber. The Commissioner has promised us if we have plenty of
hands he will shorten our service.'"[49] In Forbath's words:
The baskets of severed hands, set down at the feet of the
European post commanders, became the symbol of the Congo Free
State. ... The collection of hands became an end in itself.
Force Publique soldiers brought them to the stations in place of
rubber; they even went out to harvest them instead of rubber ...
They became a sort of currency. They came to be used to make up
for shortfalls in rubber quotas, to replace ... the people who
were demanded for the forced labour gangs; and the Force
Publique soldiers were paid their bonuses on the basis of how
many hands they collected.
In theory, each right hand proved a killing. In practice, to
save ammunition soldiers sometimes "cheated" by simply cutting
off the hand and leaving the victim to live or die. More than a
few survivors later said that they had lived through a massacre
by acting dead, not moving even when their hands were severed,
and waiting till the soldiers left before seeking help. In some
instances a soldier could shorten his service term by bringing
more hands than the other soldiers, which led to widespread
mutilations and dismemberment. Leopold II reportedly disapproved
of dismemberment because it harmed his economic interests. He
was quoted as saying "Cut off hands—that's idiotic. I'd cut off
all the rest of them, but not hands. That's the one thing I need
in the Congo."[36] Other practices used to force workers to
collect rubber included taking women and family members
hostage.[35] ABIR agents would imprison the chief of any village
which fell behind its quota; in July 1902 one post recorded that
it held 44 chiefs in prison. These prisons were in a poor
condition and the posts at Bongandanga and Mompono recorded
death rates of three to ten prisoners per day each in 1899.[37]
Persons with records of resisting the company were deported to
forced labour camps. At least three camps, one at Lireko, one on
the Upper Maringa River and one on the Upper Lopori River.[37]
Aside from rubber collection, violence in the Free State chiefly
occurred in connection with wars and rebellions. Native states,
notably Msiri's Yeke Kingdom, the Zande Federation, and
Swahili-speaking territory in the eastern Congo under Tippu Tip,
refused to recognise colonial authority and were defeated by the
Force Publique with great brutality, during the Congo Arab
war.[38] In 1895, a military mutiny broke out among the Batetela
in Kasai, leading to a 4-year insurgency. The conflict was
particularly brutal and caused a great number of casualties.[39]
...
The presence of rubber companies such as ABIR exacerbated the
effect of natural disasters such as famine and disease. ABIR's
tax collection system forced men out from the villages to
collect rubber which meant that there was no labour available to
clear new fields for planting. This in turn meant that the women
had to continue to plant worn-out fields resulting in lower
yields, a problem aggravated by company sentries stealing crops
and farm animals.[37] The post at Bonginda experienced a famine
in 1899 and in 1900 missionaries recorded a "terrible famine"
across ABIR's concession.[37]
...
Neither the Belgian monarchy nor the Belgian state has ever
apologised for the atrocities.[/quote]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Congo
[quote]By 1908, public pressure and diplomatic maneuvers led to
the end of Leopold II's personal rule and to the annexation of
the Congo as a colony of Belgium, known as the Belgian Congo.
...
During the First World War (1914–1918), the system of "mandatory
cultivation" (cultures obligatoires) was introduced, forcing
Congolese peasants to grow certain cash crops (cotton, coffee,
groundnuts) destined as commodities for export.[45] Territorial
administrators and state agronomists had the task of supervising
and, if necessary, sanctioning those peasants who evaded the
hated mandatory cultivation.[46]
...
The state took over so-called "vacant lands" (land not directly
used by local tribes) and redistributed the territory to
European companies, to individual white landowners (colons), or
to the missions. In this way, an extensive plantation economy
developed.
...
The basic idea was that the development of the Congo had to be
borne not by the Belgian taxpayers but by the Congolese
themselves.[55] The colonial state needed to be able to levy
taxes in money on the Congolese, so it was important that they
could make money by selling their produce or their labour within
the framework of the colonial economy.
...
disastrous effects of erosion and soil exhaustion brought about
by the mandatory cultivation scheme.
...
During World War II industrial production and agricultural
output increased drastically. The Congolese population bore the
brunt of the "war effort" – for instance, through a
reinforcement of the mandatory cultivation policy.[60] ... The
Belgian Congo became one of the major exporters of uranium to
the US during World War II (and the Cold War), particularly from
the Shinkolobwe mine. The colony provided the uranium used by
the Manhattan Project, including in atomic bombs dropped on the
Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.[41]
...
There was an "implicit apartheid". The colony had curfews for
Congolese city-dwellers and similar racial restrictions were
commonplace. Though there were no specific laws imposing racial
segregation and barring blacks from establishments frequented by
whites, de facto segregation operated in most areas. For
example, initially, the city centers were reserved to the white
population only, while the black population was organized in
cités indigènes (indigenous neighbourhoods called 'le belge').
Hospitals, department stores and other facilities were often
reserved for either whites or blacks. In the Force Publique,
black people could not pass the rank of non-commissioned
officer. The black population in the cities could not leave
their houses from 9 pm to 4 am. This type of segregation began
to disappear gradually only in the 1950s, but even then the
Congolese remained or felt treated in many respects as
second-rate citizens (for instance in political and legal
terms).
...
The paternalistic ideology underpinning colonial policy was
summed up in a catch-phrase used by Governor-General Pierre
Ryckmans (1934–46): Dominer pour servir ("Dominate to
serve").[69] The colonial government wanted to convey images of
a benevolent and conflict-free administration and of the Belgian
Congo as a true model colony. But the colonialists paid no or
very little attention to the full emancipation of the Congolese.
The colonizer alone believed he knew what was good for the
Belgian Congo.[/quote]
Also:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruanda-Urundi
[quote]the economic policy practised in the Belgian Congo was
exported eastwards: the Belgians demanded that the territories
earn profits for the motherland and that any development must
come out of funds gathered in the territory. These funds mostly
came from the extensive cultivation of coffee in the region's
rich volcanic soils.
To implement their vision, the Belgians used the existing
indigenous power structure. This consisted of a largely Tutsi
ruling class controlling a mostly Hutu population, through the
system of chiefs and sub-chiefs under the overall rule of the
two Mwami. The Belgian administrators believed that the Tutsi
were superior and deserved power. While before colonization the
Hutu had played some role in governance, the Belgians simplified
matters by further stratifying the society on ethnic lines. Hutu
anger at the Tutsi domination was largely focused on the Tutsi
elite rather than the distant colonial power.[4][/quote]
Finally, independence:
[quote]Congolese resistance against colonialism was widespread
and took many different forms.[71] Armed resistance occurred
sporadically and localized until roughly the end of the Second
World War (e.g., revolt of the Pende in 1931, mutiny in
Luluabourg 1944). From the end of the Second World War until the
late 1950s, the so-called "Pax belgica" prevailed. Until the end
of colonial rule in 1960, passive forms of resistance and
expressions of an anti-colonial sub-culture were manifold (e.g.,
Kimbanguism, after the prophet Simon Kimbangu, who was
imprisoned by the Belgians).
...
Congolese participation in World War II and news of changes in
other colonies resulted in their organising to gain more power.
As a result of the inability of the colonial government to
introduce radical and credible changes, the Congolese elites
began to organise themselves socially and soon also politically.
In the 1950s two markedly different forms of nationalism arose
among the Congolese elites. The nationalist movement—to which
the Belgian authorities, to some degree, turned a blind
eye—promoted territorial nationalism, wherein the Belgian Congo
would become one politically united state after independence.
In opposition to this was the ethno-religious and regional
nationalism that took hold in the Bakongo territories of the
west coast, Kasai and Katanga. The first political organisations
were of the latter type. ABAKO, founded in 1950 as the
Association culturelle des Bakongo and headed by Joseph
Kasa-Vubu, was initially a cultural association that soon turned
political. From the mid-1950s, it became a vocal opponent of
Belgian colonial rule. Additionally, the organization continued
to serve as the major ethno-religious organization for the
Bakongo and became closely intertwined with the Kimbanguist
Church, which was extremely popular in the lower Congo.
...
In 1958, the demands for independence radicalised quickly and
gained momentum. A key role was played by the Mouvement National
Congolais (MNC). First set up in 1956, the MNC was established
in October 1958 as a national political party that supported the
goal of a unitary and centralised Congolese nation. Its most
influential leader was the charismatic Patrice Lumumba. In 1959,
an internal split was precipitated by Albert Kalonji and other
MNC leaders who favoured a more moderate political stance (the
splinter group was deemed Mouvement National Congolais-Kalonji).
Despite the organisational divergence of the party, Lumumba's
leftist faction (now the Mouvement National Congolais-Lumumba)
and the MNC collectively had established themselves as by far
the most important and influential party in the Belgian Congo.
Belgium vehemently opposed Lumumba's leftist views and had grave
concerns about the status of their financial interests should
Lumumba's MNC gain power.
...
Increasingly, the colonial administration saw varied forms of
resistance, such as refusal to pay taxes. In some regions
anarchy threatened.[84] At the same time many Belgians resident
in the Congo opposed independence, feeling betrayed by Brussels.
Faced with a radicalisation of Congolese demands, the government
saw the chances of a gradual and carefully planned transition
dwindling rapidly.[85]
In 1959, King Baudouin made another visit to the Belgian Congo,
finding a great contrast with his visit of four years before.
Upon his arrival in Léopoldville, he was pelted with rocks by
black Belgo-Congolese citizens who were angry with the
imprisonment of Lumumba, convicted because of incitement against
the colonial government.
...
In January 1960, Congolese political leaders were invited to
Brussels to participate in a round-table conference to discuss
independence. Patrice Lumumba was discharged from prison for the
occasion. The conference agreed surprisingly quickly to grant
the Congolese practically all of their demands: a general
election to be held in May 1960 and full
independence—"Dipenda"—on 30 June 1960. This was in response to
the strong united front put up by the Congolese delegation.
...
As planned scarcely five months earlier, the hand-over ceremony
by the Belgians took place on time on 30 June 1960 at the new
residence of the Governor-General of the Belgian Congo in
Léopoldville.
One week later, a rebellion broke out within the Force Publique
against its officers, who were still predominantly Belgian. This
was a catalyst for disturbances arising all over the Congo,
mainly instigated by dissatisfied soldiers and radicalized
youngsters. In many areas, their violence specifically targeted
European victims. Within weeks, the Belgian military and later a
United Nations intervention force evacuated the largest part of
the more than 80,000 Belgians who were still working and living
in the Congo.[87][/quote]
Even in independence, the oppressors were aided in evading
justice. The Belgian state had a chance to show remorse by
leaving the Belgian colonialists to face their (well overdue!)
fate at the hands of those whom they had oppressed. It chose
instead to actively shield them from what they more than
deserved. This is why the anti-colonialist struggle is not over,
nor will it be until justice is finally done. They did not let
us finish it in the colonized territory, so we will have to
finish it in Belgium (as well as in all the other former Western
colonial powers which behaved similarly).
NEVER FORGIVE. NEVER FORGET.
#Post#: 5013--------------------------------------------------
Re: Belgian Colonialism in the Congo
By: 90sRetroFan Date: March 20, 2021, 10:58 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
OLD CONTENT contd.
www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/world/europe/belgium-kidnapping-congo
-rwanda-burundi.html
[quote]Racial segregation was a pillar of Belgian colonial rule,
historians say. Until the late 1950s, the colonial authorities
discouraged interracial romance and banned interracial marriage
before the Catholic Church.
Many white Belgian men, nevertheless, married black Congolese
women according to local customs, producing children sometimes
called métis. But in the eyes of Belgium, these children
undermined official segregation policies and blemished the white
race’s prestige, official documents from that time show.
...
“Children born out of parents of mixed color during colonial
times were always considered as a threat to the colonial
enterprise, to profits and to the prestige and the domination of
the white race,” said Assumani Budagwa, 65, a Belgian engineer
and amateur historian who was born in colonial Congo and whose
family experienced the separation of mixed-race
children.[/quote]
#Post#: 5574--------------------------------------------------
Re: Belgian Colonialism in the Congo
By: guest5 Date: April 15, 2021, 9:58 pm
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The Congo’s colonial history
[quote]Did you know that between 1880 and 1920, Belgium’s King
Leopold II murdered 50% of the Congo’s population, for which
Belgium has never formally apologised?
#KingLeopoldII​[/quote]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho-dCWGstj4
#Post#: 9861--------------------------------------------------
Re: Belgian Colonialism in the Congo
By: 90sRetroFan Date: November 22, 2021, 4:49 am
---------------------------------------------------------
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7BB4z351GY
Rather than financial reparations, it would be more meaningful
to permanently open Belgium's borders for anyone from its former
colonies who wish to migrate there.
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