The Crime of the Congo - Arthur Conan Doyle (ebook reader for laptop TXT) 📗

establish a fort, I was given some native soldiers and a prodigious stock of ammunition. My chief gave me the following instructions: ‘Crush every obstacle!’ I obeyed, and cut through my district by fire and sword. I had left Antwerp thinking I was simply to gather rubber. Great was my stupefaction when the truth dawned on me.”

This, with the letter of Lieutenant Tilkens, as quoted before, gives some insight into the position of the agent.

Indeed, there is something to be said for these unfortunate men, for it is a more awful thing to be driven to crime than to endure it. This is the sequence of events. The man sees an advertisement offering a commercial situation in the tropics. He applies to a bureau. He is told that the salary is some seventy-five pounds a year, with a bonus on results. He knows nothing of the country or conditions. He accepts. He is then asked if he has any money. He has not. One hundred pounds is advanced to him for expenses and outfit, and he is pledged to work it off. He goes out and finds the terrible nature of the task before him. He must condone crime to get his results. Suppose he resigns? “Certainly,” say the authorities; “but you must remain there until you have worked off your debt!” He cannot possibly get down the river for the steamers are all under Government control. What can he do then? There is one thing which he very frequently does, and that is, to blow out his brains. The statistics of suicide are higher than in any service in the world. But suppose he takes the line: “Very well, I will stay if you make me do so, but I will expose these misdeeds to Europe.” What then? The routine is a simple one. An official charge is preferred against him of ill-treating the natives. Ill-treating of some sort is always going forward, and there is no difficulty with the help of the sentries in proving that something for which the agent is responsible does not tally with the written law, however much it might be the recognized custom. He is taken to Boma, tried and condemned. Thus it comes about that the prison of Boma may at the same time contain the best men and the worst — the men whose ideas were too humane for the authorities as well as those whose crimes could not be overlooked even by a Congolese administration. Take warning, you who seek service in this dark country, for suicide, the Boma prison, or such deeds as will poison your memory for ever are the only choice which will lie before you.

Here is the sort of official circular which descends in its thousands upon the agent. This particular one was from the Commissioner in the Welle district:

“I give you carte blanche to procure 4,000 kilos of rubber a month. You have two months in which to work your people. Employ gentleness at first, and if they persist in resisting the demands of the State, employ force of arms.”

And this State was formed for the “moral and material advantage of the native!”

While dealing with trials at Boma I will give some short account of the Caudron case, which occurred in 1904. This case was remarkable as establishing judicially what was always clear enough: the complicity between the State and the criminal. Caudron was a man against whom 120 cold-blooded murders were charged. He was, in fact, a zealous and efficient agent of the Anversoise Society, that same company whose red-edged securities rose to such a height when Manager Lothaire taught the natives what a Minister in the Belgian House described as “the Christian law of work.” He did his best for the company, and he did his best for himself, for he had a three per cent. commission upon the rubber. Why he should be chosen among all his fellow-murderers is hard to explain, but it was so, and he found himself at Boma with a sentence of twenty years. On appealing, this was reduced to fifteen years, which experience has shown to mean in practice two or three. The interesting point of his trial, however, is that his appeal, and the consequent decrease of sentence which justified that appeal, were based upon the claim that the Government were cognisant of the murderous raids, and that the Government soldiers were used to effect them. The points brought out by the trial were:

1. The existence of a system of organized oppression, plunder, and massacre, in order to increase the output of india-rubber for the benefit of a “company,” which is only a covering name for the Government itself.

2. That the local authorities of the Government are cognisant, and participatory in this system.

3. That local officials of the Government engage in these rubber raids, and that Government troops are regularly employed thereon.

4. That the Judicature is powerless to place the real responsibility on the proper shoulders.

5. That, consequently, these atrocities will continue until the system itself is extirpated.

Caudron’s counsel called for the production of official documents to show how the chain of responsibility went, but the President of the Appeal Court refused it, knowing as clearly as we do, that it could only conduct to the Throne itself.

One might ask how the details of this trial came to Europe when it is so seldom that anything leaks out from the Courts of Boma. The reason was that there lived in Boma a British coloured subject named Shanu, who was at the pains to attend the court day by day in order to preserve some record of the procedure. This he dispatched to Europe. The sequel is interesting. The man’s trade, which was a very large one, was boycotted, he lost his all, brooded over his misfortunes, and finally took his own life — another martyr in the cause of the Congo.

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1. It was proved in 1906 with regard to one of the Belgian papers that the Free State had paid to it 9,000 francs, at the rate of 500 francs a month. One of the principal shareholders of this paper, Commandant Lemaire, having learned the fact on his return from the Congo, insisted on the return of this money to the Free State, and, the State refusing it, had it distributed among nine charities.

2. A representative specially sent to the Congo by the Italian government.

VI Voices from the Darkness

I will now return to the witnesses of the shocking treatment of the natives. Rev. Joseph Clark was an American missionary living at Ikoko in the Crown Domain, which was King Leopold’s own special private preserve. These letters cover the space between 1893 and 1899.

This is Ikoko as he found it in 1893:

“Irebo contains say 2,000 people. Ikoko has at least 4,000, and there are other towns within easy reach, several as large as Irebo, and two probably as large as Ikoko The people are fine-looking, bold and active.”

In 1903 there were 600 people surviving.

In 1894 Ikoko in the Crown Domain began to feel the effects of King Leopold’s system. On May 30th of that year Mr. Clark writes:

“Owing to trouble with the State the Irebo people fled and left their homes. Yesterday the State soldiers shot a sick man who had not attempted to run away, and others have been killed by the State (native) soldiers, who, in the absence of a white man, do as they please.”

In November, 1894:

“At Ikoko quite a number of people have been killed by the soldiers, and most of the others are living in the bush.”

In the same month he complained officially to Commissaire Fievez:

“If you do not come soon and stop the present trouble the towns will be empty…. I entreat you to help us to have peace on the Lake…. It seems so hard to see the dead bodies in the creek and on the beach, and to know why they are killed…. People living in the bush like wild beasts without shelter or proper food; and afraid to make fires. Many died in this way. One woman ran away with three children — they all died in the forest, and the woman herself came back a wreck and died before long — ruined by exposure and starvation. We knew her well. My hope was to get the facts put before King Leopold, as I was sure he knew nothing of the awful conditions of the collection of the so-called ‘rubber tax.’”

On November 28th he writes:

“The State soldiers brought in seven hands, and reported having shot the people in the act of running away to the French side…. We found all that the soldiers had reported was untrue, and that the statements made by the natives to me were true. We saw only six bodies; a seventh had evidently fallen into the water, and we learned in a day or two that an eighth body had floated into the landing-place above us — a woman that had either been thrown or had fallen into the water after being shot.”

On December 5th he says: “A year ago we passed or visited between here and Ikoko the following villages:

Probable population.

Lobwaka 250 Boboko 250 Bosungu 100 Kenzie 150 Bokaka 200 Mosenge 150 Ituta 80 Ngero 2,000

Total 3,180

“A week ago I went up, and only at Ngero were there any people: there we found ten. Ikoko did not contain over twelve people other than those employed by Frank. Beyond Ikoko the case is the same.”

April 12th, 1895, he writes:

“I am sorry that rubber palavers continue. Every week we hear of some fighting, and there are frequent ‘rows,’ even in our village, with the armed and unruly soldiers…. During the past twelve months it has cost more lives than native wars and superstition would have sacrificed in three to five years. The people make this comparison among themselves…. It seems incredible and awful to think of these savage men armed with rifles and let loose to hunt and kill people, because they do not get rubber to sell at a mere nothing to the State, and it is blood-curdling to see them returning with hands of the slain and to find the hands of young children, amongst bigger ones, evidencing their ‘bravery.’”

The following was written on May 3rd, 1895:

“The war is on account of rubber. The State demands that the natives shall make rubber and sell same to its agents at a very low price. The natives do not like it. It is hard work and very poor pay, and takes them away from their homes into the forest, where they feel very unsafe, as there are always feuds among them…. The rubber from this district has cost hundreds of lives, and the scenes I have witnessed while unable to help the oppressed have been almost enough to make me wish I were dead. The soldiers are themselves savages, some even cannibals, trained to use rifles, and in many cases they are sent away without supervision, and they do as they please. When they come to any town no man’s property or wife is safe, and when they are at war they are like devils.

“Imagine them returning from fighting some ‘rebels’; see, on the bow of the canoe is a pole and a bundle of something on it…. These are the hands (right hands) of sixteen warriors they have slain. ‘Warriors!’ Don’t you see among them the hands of little children and girls? I have seen them. I have seen where even the trophy has been cut off while yet the poor heart beat strongly enough to shoot the blood from the cut arteries to a distance of fully four feet.

“A young baby was brought here one time;