African Holocaust: 10 million Africans Killed In Congo
Before Hitler killed 6 million Jews, Leopold II of Belgium killed almost 10 million Africans in Congo and amputated the arms of countless others. Continue to read to know about the hidden African holocaust.
When European leaders split up and allocated regions in what became known as the Scramble for Africa in 1885, Leopold II’s appeal to them was “civilisation.”
He committed to carrying out a humanitarian and charitable effort to help Africans.
In exchange, European leaders assembled in Berlin and handed him 2-meter square kilometres (770,000 square miles) to establish a personal colony where he could do as he pleased. It was dubbed as Congo Free State by Leopold II.
The Congo Free State gradually devolved into a harsh, exploitative government that cultivated and traded rubber, ivory, and minerals through forced labour.
Congo Free State’s violence and brutality are well documented in archive photos.
The photograph above is a gripping imagery of the African Holocaust. We can see a man sitting on a low platform, looking at the dismembered little foot and hand. They belonged to his five-year-old daughter, who was killed later when her town ran out of rubber. It is said, when Leopold II’s quotas were not met, chopping off the limbs of enslaved Congolese was a common form of punishment.
Orphaned children were also taken from communities and transported to “child camps” to work or train as soldiers. According to estimates, more than half of the population died there.
Although Leopold II never visited, he put the revenues into Belgium and his own pockets.
Leopold II created the Africa Museum on the grounds of his Tervuren palace, which included a “human zoo” with 267 Congolese people as exhibits.
In addition to the killing and maiming, diseases had a role in the deaths of millions of Africans. The Belgians did not care about the workers’ health, feeding them unhealthy meat and vegetables and starving them most of the time.
The Belgians kept the Congolese people in slavery and servitude for the commercial profit of their riches.
One of the most horrific testimonies of the African Holocaust was the burning of the Colognese villages. The Belgian commissioners and their officers assigned a quota to each hamlet in Congo, and if the villagers were unable to meet the quota, their villages were burned to the ground.
Based on these horrific crimes under the leadership of Leopold II, diplomatic pressures increased from different sides of the world. As a result, Leopold II had to abandon his control over the Congo Free State and hand it over to the Belgian government. Later, Congo was renamed the Belgian Congo.
Did you know?
Congo is still a European territory, and European countries are always at odds with each other, attempting to take their resources while keeping the inhabitants divided.
Congo is experiencing a silent genocide. Hundreds of millions of people are killed so that the western world might profit from its natural resources.
Congo has more than 60% of the world’s cobalt reserves, which are utilised in the manufacture of cellphones.
Western governments are offering financial military aid to invade reserves-rich regions, killing millions in the process.
Multinational mining corporations enslave individuals, often children, in order to mine.
As for Belgium, its colonial history has been largely ignored for decades. Many classrooms still have Hergé’s iconic cartoon book, Tintin in the Congo, which is racist because of its representations of black people.
Never forget that history is a map of the past created from a specific point of view. We cannot stay slaves to our past, nor can we progress without learning from it.
#AfricanHolocaust
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