More on Leopold the Slaughterer

During the carnival in Brussels the Belgian minister of foreign affairs, Didier Reynders, decided to paint his face black and join the parade of “Noirauds” —literally, “the swarthy ones”. The Noirauds are supposed to represent African nobleman or “kings,” So the white men are dressed up like oddly archaic high-hatted blackamoors, with silk pants, black tights and flashy shoes. The original intent, back in 1876, was to collect money festively and anonymously for an orphanage.

 It was in 1876 that Belgian King Leopold II called together a meeting of 35 explorers, geographers and businessmen to talk about the so-called dark continent. The pretext was charitable or, as we’d say these days, “humanitarian.” The ostensible purpose was to stop the slave trade and bring “civilization” to the people. In fact, Leopold implemented a policy hard to describe as anything but genocidal.

“It didn’t start as a national enterprise, but was presented by the king as a international philanthropic endeavor, a personal project of Leopold II,” says David van Reybrouck, author of the acclaimed history Congo: The Epic History of a People. “It was the plan of a European head of state who wanted to rule African territory, but it was very costly to finance the colonization. He was trying to warm up the Belgian people for the project,” Van Reybrouck explained “but that only worked for the gentry and the upper middle classes.” Of course the African population’s opinion on the matter was not part of the picture.

From 1885 to 1908 the megalomaniacal Leopold ended up confiscating and brutally ruling what was called Congo-Free-State, making it his personal pet project, and the country that has since been called Zaire and the Democratic Republic of Congo is still paying the price of his misrule, with grave human rights abuses, including the use of rape as a weapon of war. Leopold exerted his power through his “Force Publique,” an army of African soldiers and white officers to whom slavery, torture, rape, beheadings and amputations were part of a daily routine, as documented in Adam Hochshild’s memorable King Leopold’s Ghost. The monarch ruled with an iron fist, pillaging the Free State’s rubber and other resources, and slaughtering or starving its people. When the full scale of the massacre became known, it was estimated that of 20 million Africans in Congo when Belgium took it, only eight million survived. 

Maybe the average Belgian of the time was blissfully unaware of this holocaust in faraway lands. But there’s no excuse today, especially for Foreign Minister Reynders. King Leopold’s ghost lives on—in blackface.

Promises ...always promises

Soaring economic growth in many African countries is coming at the expense of the poor, according to a new report, ‘Africa Rising?’ Despite a decade of high growth across the continent, the wealth created is not being equally shared and so progress in human development in Africa has been disappointingly limited, according to the report by Christian Aid and Tax Justice Network-Africa.

But the growing gap between rich and poor is not simply the result of the rich getting richer, the authors say. They also point to money escaping offshore in illicit flows as well as tax systems that are failing to redistribute wealth and in some cases even disadvantaging the poor.

“Inequality has been exacerbated by the growth model in many countries which has seen a concentration of income,” said Alvin Mosioma at Tax Justice Network-Africa. “It also reflects the inability of governments to tax the proceeds of growth, either because so much is given away in corporate tax breaks, or has escaped offshore into tax havens. Until tax dodging is tackled effectively, nationally and internationally, and illicit finance flows from the continent halted, economic inequality will continue to rise.”

Standard Chartered said that the 16 percent annual increase in African revenue in the past five years is “sustainable.” Viswanathan Shankar, chief executive officer for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas  of the London-based bank explained “There is huge interest in Africa; it is a continent of hope and of rising world interest,” Shankar said. “If you look at World Bank data 7 of the top 10 fastest-growing economies over the next 10 years are projected to be in Africa.”

Standard Chartered was the biggest arranger of syndicated loans in sub-Saharan Africa in 2013, its deals included raising $3.25 billion in a seven-year term-loan for Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote’s Dangote Industries Ltd. and $1.99 billion in three- and five-year financing for Aspen Global Inc., a Mauritius-based company with interests in medical products. Standard Chartered’s operating profit from Africa grew 9.8 percent in the first half of 2013 to $357 million, while revenue climbed 16 percent to $853 million, making up 8.7% percent of overall income. Growth in Africa will be led by Nigeria, Ghana, which has a history of good economic and political governance, Kenya and Angola and the increasing use of financial products like bonds, loans and mortgages.

Meantime while the financial sector boasts of promising profits in the future a lack of electricity continues to be a major problem in parts of Africa. According to the Washington Post, only 14 percent of people get any electricity at all in Tanzania, and across sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 590 million people lack access to power. This problem has had severe effects. Indoor air pollution from wood stoves kills 3.5 million people per year, more than AIDS and malaria combined.

The legacy of Belgium’s empire left just a few dozen Congolese university graduates and an economy built chiefly to supply Belgium with raw materials. Even today, there is just 2,000 km (1,250 miles) of paved road in a nation the size of Western Europe. Millions of Congolese are estimated to have died and the country was decimated between 1885 and 1908 after King Leopold II declared Congo his personal property. The king's troops were ordered to collect the hands of victims, often shot for resisting slave labour, to prove they had not wasted bullets. Leopold even imported Congolese for a human zoo to show life in the country he never visited.
Adam Hochschild, author of "King Leopold's Ghost" describes Leopold's unrestrained plunder of Congo, told Reuters he has been surprised at many Belgians' ignorance of what happened in colonial times. Belgium may not be the power it once was, but its people are among the richest Europeans. Much of that prosperity can be traced to the colonial past, when the country stood among the globe's most successful trading economies. Over the first six decades of the 20th century, ivory, rubber, copper and diamonds all flowed from Africa to Belgium. The royal family's wealth is reflected in its sprawling palace, extended by Leopold and modeled on Versailles.
In the more than half-century that Belgium ran Congo from 1908 to 1960, hundreds of thousands of Belgians worked there in everything from business to colonial administration yet exports from Congo were little more than 280 million euros last year.

Promises turn into lies if they are not kept. It is too easy to come up with an impressive list of things to do, knowing too well that it's just a pipe dream that will fizzle out. For far too long citizens have fallen for those with the rhetoric and have paid dearly. The time has come to interrogate what they say to us. It does not help democracy or our future if we allow politicians to continue making promises they won't honour. We have been told how millions of our people will be employed and how corruption will be squashed, but all the talk is short on detail. In the global world in which we live, it is imperative that we look beyond our borders.

Leopold - Africa's Hitler

King Leopold II of Belgium “owned” the Congo during his reign as the constitutional monarch of Belgium. After several failed colonial attempts in Asia and Africa, he settled on the Congo. He “bought” it and enslaved its people, turning the entire country into his own personal slave plantation. He disguised his business transactions as “philanthropic” and “scientific” efforts under the banner of the International African Society. He used their enslaved labor to extract Congolese resources and services. His reign was enforced through work camps, body mutilations, torture, executions, and his own private army.

Most of us aren’t taught about him in school. We don’t hear about him in the media. He’s not part of the widely-repeated narrative of oppression (which includes things like the Holocaust during World War II). He’s part of a long history of colonialism, imperialism, slavery, and genocide in Africa that would clash with the social construction of a white supremacist narrative in our schools. It doesn’t fit neatly into school curriculums in a capitalist society. Making overtly racist remarks is (sometimes) frowned upon in ‘polite’ society, but it’s quite fine not to talk about genocide in Africa perpetrated by European capitalist monarchs.

Mark Twain wrote a satire about Leopold called “King Leopold’s Soliloquy; A Defense of His Congo Rule”, where he mocked the King’s defense of his reign of terror, largely through Leopold’s own words. It’s an easy read at 49 pages. Mark Twain is a popular author in American public schools. But like most political authors, we will often read some of their least political writings or read them without learning why the author wrote them in the first place. Orwell’s Animal Farm, for example, serves to reinforce American anti-socialist propaganda about how egalitarian societies are doomed to turn into their dystopian opposites. But Orwell was an anti-capitalist revolutionary of a different kind—and that is never pointed out. We can read about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, but “King Leopold’s Soliloquy” isn’t on the reading list. This isn’t by accident. Reading lists are created by boards of education in order to prepare students to follow orders and endure boredom. From the point of view of the Department of Education, Africans have no history.

When we learn about Africa, we learn about a caricatured Egypt, about the HIV epidemic (but never its causes), about the surface level effects of the slave trade, and maybe about South African Apartheid (the effects of which, we are taught, are now long, long over). We also see lots of pictures of starving children on Christian Ministry commercials, we see safaris on animal shows, and we see pictures of deserts in films and movies. But we don’t learn about the Great African War or Leopold’s Reign of Terror during the Congolese Genocide. Nor do we learn about what the United States has done in Iraq and Afghanistan, killing millions of people through bombs, sanctions, disease, and starvation. Body counts are important. And the United States Government doesn’t count Afghan, Iraqi, or Congolese people.

Though the Congolese Genocide isn’t included on Wikipedia’s “Genocides in History” page, it does mention the Congo. What’s now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo is listed in reference to the Second Congo War (also called Africa’s World War and the Great War of Africa), where both sides of the multinational conflict hunted down Bambenga people—a regional ethnic group—and cannibalized them. Cannibalism and slavery are horrendous evils which must be entered into history for sure, but I couldn’t help thinking whose interests were served when the only mention of the Congo on the page was in reference to multinational incidents where a tiny minority of people in Africa were eating each other (completely devoid of the conditions which created the conflict). Stories which support the white supremacist narrative about the subhumanness of people in Africa are allowed to be entered into the records of history. The white guy who turned the Congo into his own personal part-plantation, part-concentration camp, part-Christian ministry—and killed 10 to 15 million Congolese people in the process—doesn’t make the cut.

You see, when you kill ten million Africans, you aren’t called ‘Hitler’. That is, your name doesn’t come to symbolize the living incarnation of evil. Your name and your picture don’t produce fear, hatred, and sorrow. Your victims aren’t talked about and your name isn’t remembered.

Leopold was just one of thousands of things that helped construct white supremacy as both an ideological narrative and material reality. I don’t pretend that he was the source of all evil in the Congo. He had generals, and foot soldiers, and managers who did his bidding and enforced his laws. He was at the head of a system. But that doesn’t negate the need to talk about the individuals who are symbolic of the system. But we don’t even get that. And since it isn’t talked about, what capitalism did to Africa, all the privileges that rich white people gained from the Congolese genocide, remain hidden. The victims of imperialism are made, like they usually are, invisible.

Taken from here 

DETENTION CAMPS IN BELGIUM ARE FOR BUSINESS

The author writes from personal experience having been imprisoned for 6 months at a Belgium detention camp .

The Kingdom of Belgium Government's inhuman Asylum and Immigration Laws are coming to a state of explosion. In 1998, Belgium built more than five detention camps and all are functioning proper. For example, VOTTEM, Liège detention camp is made up of four sections in a cross form. Each section is made up of twelve rooms. And each room is made up of two wooden double bunks that contain four persons in a room. This VOTTEM is a closed camp that you have no access to your freedom. And the same situation applies to other camps in Belgium. They used the same design as Hitler's detention camps in the 1930s and built their own.

It is unfortunate that the people kept there are mostly immigrants from Africa, Asia, South America and Eastern Europe. These people did not commit any crime. Only that they are on their asylum procedure. They are locked up for good eight months without release. Does that reflects democracy in a country that claims advance and the capital of Europe? There was an Algerian that was detained in Vottem for eleven good months because of papers , without compensation.

In every detention camps in Belgium contains one hundred and sixty (160) detainees. And the United Nations pay two hundred Dollars ($200.00) per person everyday. And these centres spend about ten Dollars ($10.00) per person everyday. Belgium is rated as the number one racist nation in the whole world. In 1998, five Belgium Gendarmerie killed a Nigerian lady called SAMIRA ADAMU and no compensation was made to the deceased's family. Belgium have formed many kangaroo tribunals that are made up of three to five persons to judge whether an illegal immigrant have the right to be released from the detention closed camp. These are businesses, they do nothing to help the immigrants but to detain them more in order to make more profits. These people appointed to head the tribunals cannot act as the law stipulates but wait for an instruction from the Office des Etrangers or the foreign office in Brussels. Therefore, the tribunal in Liege and other places in Belgium are there to mark time for the immigrants to stay more in the detention camps. In nutshell, the more months you stay in the detention camp, the more money they get for you.

Lest I forget, the Belgium tribunals are made up of the judge, the clerk, the prosecutor, the accused immigrant, your lawyer and two policemen that will bring you out from the court cell in handcuffs to the tribunal panel. No observer or reporter is allowed to enter the tribunal hall. Everything about the tribunal is top secret. Also, they will not allow you to bring in your private lawyer. The immigrant is only allowed to go to tribunal with their own government appointed lawyer. Does this inhuman attitude reflect a thorough democracy as Belgium's claims to be?

In the detention camps AIDS can be easily transmitted through blood transfusion. This is because ten detainees use one disposable shaving stick per day. Of course it is not hygienic for anybody to use one disposal shaving stick with another person.

These groups of vandals, i.e. the Ministry of Interior, the Judiciary, the police and the airlines have connived to operate this kind of mafia capitalism in order to enrich themselves. In this situation, they take their so-called illegal immigrants to the Zaventum airport for deportation without the consent of the Embassy of that immigrant. The worst part of it is that the day of the deportation date the security in the detention camp will take you secretly without the knowledge of other detainees and put you alone in a solitary confinement where you will be ex-communicado till the day of your deportation. Surprisingly, you will see yourself to the tarmac where the plane is already waiting to fly and they will tell you to enter and go to your country just like that. Some immigrants fly home just because of fear of four policemen that will be mounting pressure for you to go back to your country. Already you will be traumatised after passing through mental torture. Some immigrants having no choice of help at that point in time will decide to fly irrespective of the danger awaiting them in their respective countries. Where on earth does this type of illegal action happen? Nowhere except in Belgium.

It is obligatory for Belgium to take immigrants to the airport for deportation. But, where the person refuse to travel to his or her country, they will feel happy to bring you back to the detention camp and keep you for extra two months or more in order to make more money from you. It is surprising to every detainee that before they bring you back to the detention camp a letter for refusing to travel is awaiting you from the foreign office to the detention camp for signing. And this happens even on weekends when no official duty is carried on. This will enable one to know that every detention camp in Belgium is for profit.

The food and drinks that they supply to prison and detention camps are free by from the manufacturers. Sometimes, it will remain some days to the expiring date and the detainees will still eat them because they have no choice.

In the Article 31 of the 1951 Refugee Convention prohibits the imposition of penalties on account of illegal entry or presence of people seeking protection. Our higher courts have agreed. Large compensation payments continue to be made for wrongful convictions or detentions. But Belgium does the opposite.

In March 2003, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reminded all States to "take concrete steps to ensure that refugees and asylum seekers are not subject to punishment". But Belgium does the opposite. From the look of things, I don't think that the United Nations are doing enough to protect refugees in Belgium. Refugees and asylum seekers are facing a lot of police control in Belgium. And nobody comes to their aid. It is inimical and criminal that a country that calls herself a developed nation is still practising the Nazi system of 1930 ideology. It is the right time that the world should rise against the Belgium attitude of detaining immigrants unlawfully without compensation as stated by the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951.

Dele Iloyana , ex-detainee , 26 January 2004
kingdeleiloanya@hotmail.com