Acts of genocide in human history. “Heart of Darkness”: Belgian colonialists in the Congo Belgians in the Congo

King Leopold's Congo Free State. An unhappy father looks at the foot and hand of his five-year-old daughter, eaten by the plantation police.

The capital of the European Union has still not recognized the mass destruction in Africa.

Yes, we are not a European nation! And do you know why? We are kind! Our ancestors did not burn witches en masse and did not chop off blacks’ hands for failing to meet the standards for delivering rubber to the inventors of “European standards.” And Europe cut down! Moreover, quite recently. A little over a hundred years ago. And ahead of this humanitarian meat grinder walked the same Brussels, which is now the capital of the European Union and which so often criticizes Ukraine for non-compliance with humanitarian norms. Yes, he walked so bravely that even the rest of the European colonialists were horrified: they say, dear Belgian gentlemen, you can’t do this! After all, you simply undermine faith in the noble mission of the white man, bringing civilization to backward tribes.

The story that I will tell (I am sure that the vast majority of readers are completely unaware of it) once again proves that the most important thing in this life is PR. You can be the ultimate scoundrel and murderer, but if you buy the right “European” paper certifying that you are a lover of humanity and a benefactor, you can get away with any abomination. Even if for breakfast, instead of fresh orange juice, you think of drinking the blood of newborn babies. I think so, this tradition started in Europe since those medieval times, when any murderer bought an indulgence with remission of sins from the Catholic Church. You paid the money and you can go out on the robber’s road again. Nobody will say a word to you.

BRITISH PROJECT. Well, what associations come to your mind when you hear the word Belgium? Probably the boy peeing in Brussels, the expression “a civilized European country” where two official languages ​​coexist peacefully. Flemish school of painting - Rubens and other great artists who convey the generosity of existence. Till Ullenspiegel is a symbol of the heroic resistance of Flanders to the Spaniards. And people savvy in history will also remember that aggressive Germany twice violated Belgian neutrality - in 1914 and 1940. In general, a most respectable reputation! It would never even occur to anyone that among the citizens of this lovely country maniacs could be born en masse, patronizing cannibals from the distant African Congo in the name of scientifically rational methods of exploiting this colony.

The Belgian King Leopold was called "the broker on the throne." Made money even from human flesh in Africa

The main Belgian maniac who patronized African cannibals was King Leopold. This character should not be confused with the cat from the cartoon, who became famous for the phrase: “Guys, let’s live together!” This Leopold belonged to the Saxe-Coburg dynasty, wore the serial number “second”, and used friendly Leopoldian phrases to cover up the most vile deeds. He was still a cat!

By the time our Leopold came to the throne in 1865, Belgium was one of the youngest European states. Before 1830, there was no Belgium. In the Middle Ages, these lands were called the Southern Netherlands. At first they belonged to Burgundy, then to Spain, and until the end of the 18th century - to Austria. The Southern Netherlands passed from country to country according to dynastic succession. The Burgundian Duke Charles the Bold did not have an heir in the male line - so these landowners went to shake hands among his distant august relatives.

Then Napoleon appeared and swept everything under France. After his reassurance in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna, the Southern Netherlands were annexed to the Kingdom of Holland, urgently created by English order. The main purpose of the existence of this regional “superpower” was to protect Great Britain from invasion from the continent. Whoever would think of landing in the heart of the British crown - the French or the Germans, and on their way is Holland, whose independence is guaranteed by the British John Bull with his fleet.

NAMED AFTER THE EUROMAN-EATERS. True, very soon the British began to feel that the Dutch were turning up their noses too much. And they inspired a “national liberation revolution” in 1830 in the Southern Netherlands, populated predominantly by French-speaking citizens. When the Dutch king suppressed it, occupying Antwerp and already approaching Brussels, Great Britain declared that he should immediately climb back to his Holland. Otherwise, he will immediately land his troops on the continent. This is how the Kingdom of Belgium arose.

Its name was urgently pulled out of a history textbook. Once upon a time in ancient ancient times, which, if you believe the Moscow scoundrels Fomenko and Nosovsky, did not exist at all, the future Belgium was inhabited by the Celtic tribe of the Belgs - wild and bloodthirsty, who loved to make human sacrifices and cut off heads. Julius Caesar exterminated this tribe to the roots - sacrificed it, so to speak, to the Roman gods. Only the memory remained. The country, which is now the capital of the European Union, was named in honor of these ancient European cannibals.

The Brussels boy, the symbol of the capital of the European Union, flaunts the same proud Leopoldian pose.

RUSSIAN COLONEL. The British gave the Crown of Belgium to Leopold II's daddy - also Leopold, but the First. For the simple reason that he was related to the British ruling dynasty. Connections, corruption, hand washes hand... What did you think? It is precisely what enlightened Europeans are now struggling with that brought the elder Leopold to the throne! However, the first Leopold was not only a petty German prince, but also a Russian colonel. In the service of Russia, he commanded the Life Guards Cuirassier Regiment in the Napoleonic Wars, received a golden sword for bravery and even rose to the rank of lieutenant general.

Great Britain, naturally, coordinated the candidacy of this gallant retiree for the Belgian throne with Russia. Petersburg gave the go-ahead. Leopold I satisfied everyone. He rode into Brussels on a white horse, swore allegiance to the Belgian constitution, urgently written on this occasion, married a French princess who was 22 years younger than him, and began to rule peacefully, without bullying anyone in particular. Which is understandable - he fought a lot in his youth. The day of Leopold I's entry into Brussels - July 21, 1831 - is now one of the main Belgian holidays.

And then this hero-cavalryman gave birth to an heir - the little bastard Leopold II. Since childhood, he was distinguished by vicious inclinations and at the same time a talented ability to pass himself off as a good boy. The young Belgian prince most of all wanted to torture someone, rob and profit from someone else's misfortune. Apparently, the blood of his ancestors - feudal robbers - spoke in him. But Leopold II understood that in the center of Europe, after the severed heads of the French Louis XVI and the British Charles I, he would not be allowed to roam much. He was careful not to torment the Belgians. On the contrary, he constantly praised the Belgian constitution and boasted about how it respected the rights of the Belgian people. Our Leopold came up with some entertainment on the side - in distant Africa, where no one bothered him.

I WANT TO BE PHILANTHROPIC! Leopold began to convince everyone that he wanted to patronize the sciences - especially geographical research. In 1876, he organized at his own expense, without going into the state budget, the International Association for the Exploration and Civilization of Central Africa. Belgian citizens were only happy about this. Let the king have fun! As long as he doesn't meddle in our affairs.

Henry Stanley with a black boy. Opened the way for Leopold II into the wilds of the Congo

Immediately after its inception, the Association of the Cat, excuse me, King Leopold, sent an expedition to Africa, led by the famous traveler and journalist Henry Stanley, a correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph and the American New York Herald. The matter was carried out on a grand scale. The Knight of the Free Press did not travel alone, but under the protection of a detachment of two thousand people! Officially, the guys were engaged in geographical research. In reality, they sniffed out what was wrong where. The expedition's route lay in the Congo, a huge Central African country near the equator.

Since the 16th century, it was in these places that black slaves were mined. Black residents of the United States are mainly descendants of immigrants, or rather “exporters,” from these places. And the places there were disastrous for Europeans because of malarial swamps and the tsetse fly, a carrier of sleeping sickness. Therefore, the whites did not particularly pry into the Congo - they preferred to act through intermediaries, hiring the most aggressive tribes of blacks to catch other blacks.

But by 1876, when Leopold founded his Association for Further Civilization, the business had fallen into disrepair. Slavery was banned throughout the world except Brazil. And the market was already heavily saturated with black ancestors of future great football players. Leopold was interested in whether it was possible to replace the slave trade with something? Moreover, in the same places where it recently flourished and using the same local personnel? For example, is it possible to establish plantations of the Brazilian Hevea plant in the Congo, which produces material for rubber - rubber?

Subjects of King Leopold. Under guard and in chains - otherwise they will run away

TIRES AND CONDOMS. Leopold was interested in rubber for two reasons. In Europe, which actively visited brothels, the condom was just invented and put into mass production. But the material for it had to be imported from Brazil, the monopolist of this raw material. The Belgian king was racking his brains about how, logistically, he could find a closer place for rubber production and make money on the production of “rubber bands”? King Leopold was not at all shy about such a craft. His father-in-law, the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph, who married his daughter to the ruler of Belgium, even called his son-in-law “a broker in the crown.”

In addition, bicycles were becoming fashionable in Europe. Along with a healthy lifestyle. The production of bicycle tires also requires rubber. All this pleased King Leopold. Tires and condoms were exactly what he needed for his trading operations. And then Stanley returned from Africa with the good news that the Congo is an excellent place for rubber plantations. Both the climate and the people there are what we need!

There was a fierce struggle for Africa between the great European powers - England, France and Germany. Taking advantage of the contradictions between them, Leopold II begged for the Congo. Well, why do you, the great powers, need this terrible country with malarial mosquitoes and tsetse flies? You can't live there! Let me take upon myself the noble mission of enlightening all these Bakongo, Bapende, Bakweze, Bayaka, Bayombe, Basuku, Ngombe, Mbuja, Lokele, Mabinja and other tribes in which the devil himself will break his leg! I, Leopold, am ready to bear the white man's burden! Well, bring it, said the great European powers. And Leopold carried it.

In 1885, Leopold II, at the Berlin Conference, which was attended by Germany, Great Britain, France and Russia, achieved the right to create the Congo Free State - his personal possession, not controlled by anyone except the King of Belgium. In accordance with the terms of the General Act of the Berlin Conference, Leopold promised to “suppress the slave trade” and promote “humanitarian policies”; guarantee “free trade in the colony,” impose “no import duties for twenty years,” and “encourage charitable work and scientific enterprise.”

In reality, Leopold became an autocratic monarch in the Congo with the title of “king-sovereign”. Neither Caligula, nor Nero, nor all the tyrants of antiquity taken together did what the modest constitutional monarch of little Belgium did in Africa. And even Hitler was inferior to him in the speed of destroying the conquered population. As historians have calculated, people in the Congo during the time of King Leopold died faster than prisoners in German concentration camps during World War II!

Leopold II introduced serfdom to the Congo, forcing local blacks to work on rubber plantations. The Belgians hired the tax police from former black slave traders. For failure to comply with labor standards, these “tax officials” could easily eat a bad worker, and the cut off hands were provided to the administration of King Leopold for reporting. Yes Yes! That's exactly what happened! This is where the modern luxurious building of the European Union stands!

Leopold II in action. 19th century caricature by orders of magnitude in the free Congo

The Congolese loyal subjects of the Belgian king devoured so many of their compatriots that they were soon sick of human flesh. A person cannot overeat all the time! Therefore, the employees of the “plantation police” often simply cut off the hands of the living: go away, black brother, you disgust me, but old Leopold needs material confirmation of our service. He must know that we work conscientiously.

In addition, the “king-sovereign” established a cult of his personality in the Free State and even called the capital by his own name - Leopoldville. That's what it was called until 1966, when it was renamed Kinshasa.

The lustful Leopold II spent the money received from the business on rubber and human flesh to support his mistress Blanche Delacroix. Ironically, she bore the surname of the famous French artist and a name that translated means “white.” European journalists called this person the “Empress of the Congo.” The king built a villa for the beauty on the Cote d'Azur, had two illegitimate children from her, and even married her a few days before his death. The result of this family happiness was that the population of the Congo from 1885 to 1908 was halved - from 20 to 10 million people. A real genocide took place there.

This could not continue indefinitely. Leopold became impudent and began to impose duties. And his competitors were not asleep. Photographs of unfortunate blacks from the Congo, admiring what was left of their eaten relatives, began to appear en masse in American and European illustrated magazines. Hands, legs, skulls pleasantly surprised the European man in the street. An international scandal broke out. So this is how it turns out that Leopold II is engaged in “exploration and civilization” of the Congo! Under pressure from the international community in 1908, the elderly king was forced to abandon his personal colony. The state of Belgium took control over it directly. This is how the Belgian Congo arose, replacing King Leopold's Congo Free State.

Belgium still does not recognize the fact of genocide of the Congolese population. Like, it was the blacks themselves who killed their own kind. And we have nothing to do with it. In general, human rights activists do not like to remember this topic. It is very indecent against the backdrop of the stars and ideals of the European Community.

"HEART OF DARKNESS". In memory of the Belgian occupation of the Congo and the local “free state” that has sunk into oblivion, only the story of an English writer of Polish origin originally from the Ukrainian Berdichev - Joseph Conrad (Józef Kozhenevsky) remains. The story is called "Heart of Darkness". I advise you to read it. It is about the journey of a certain English sailor who must evacuate, on the instructions of the Company (meaning the Belgian Free Congo Company), a sales agent Kurtz who has gone off the rails. The main character goes to the very “heart of darkness” - to where the deeds of white people are blacker than the faces of those whom they “civilize”.

It is this story about the severed arms and legs of children in Africa that comes to mind when I see a bronze toddler peacefully peeing in Brussels. Leopold II was probably just as charming a child as a child. And, excuse my frankness, I also pissed on everyone - exactly like the current EU.

The Second Congo War, also known as the Great African War (1998-2002), was a war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that involved more than twenty armed groups representing nine states. By 2008, the war and its aftermath had killed 5.4 million people, mostly from disease and starvation, making it one of the deadliest wars in world history and the deadliest conflict since World War II

Some of the photos shown here are simply terrible. Please, children and people with unstable mental health refrain from viewing.

A little history. Until 1960, the Congo was a Belgian colony; on June 30, 1960, it gained independence under the name Republic of the Congo. Since 1971 renamed Zaire. In 1965, Joseph-Désiré Mobutu came to power. Under the guise of slogans of nationalism and the fight against the influence of mzungu (white people), he carried out partial nationalization and dealt with his opponents. But the communist paradise “the African way” did not work out. Mobutu's reign has gone down in history as one of the most corrupt in the twentieth century. Bribery and embezzlement flourished. The president himself had several palaces in Kinshasa and other cities of the country, a fleet of Mercedes cars and personal capital in Swiss banks, which by 1984 amounted to approximately $5 billion (at that time this amount was comparable to the country's external debt). Like many other dictators, Mobutu was elevated to the status of a virtual demigod during his lifetime. He was called the “father of the people”, “savior of the nation”. His portraits hung in most public institutions; members of parliament and government wore badges with a portrait of the president. On the evening news, Mobutu appeared every day sitting in heaven. Each banknote also featured the president.

Lake Albert was renamed in honor of Mobutu (1973), which had been named after Queen Victoria's husband since the 19th century. Only part of the water area of ​​this lake belonged to Zaire; in Uganda the old name was used, but in the USSR the renaming was recognized, and Lake Mobutu-Sese-Seko was listed in all reference books and maps. After the overthrow of Mobutu in 1996, the former name was restored. However, today it became known that Joseph-Désiré Mobutu had close “friendly” contacts with the US CIA, which continued even after the US declared him persona non grata at the end of the Cold War.

During the Cold War, Mobutu pursued a rather pro-Western foreign policy, in particular supporting the anti-communist rebels of Angola (UNITA). However, it cannot be said that Zaire’s relations with socialist countries were hostile: Mobutu was a friend of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, established good relations with China and North Korea, and allowed the Soviet Union to build an embassy in Kinshasa.

Joseph-Désiré Mobutu

All this led to the fact that the country's economic and social infrastructure was almost completely destroyed. Wages were delayed for months, the number of hungry and unemployed reached unprecedented levels, and inflation was at a high level. The only profession that guaranteed stable high earnings was the military profession: the army was the backbone of the regime.

In 1975, an economic crisis began in Zaire; in 1989, a default was declared: the state was unable to pay off its external debt. Under Mobutu, social benefits were introduced for large families, the disabled, etc., but due to high inflation, these benefits quickly depreciated.

In the mid-1990s, mass genocide began in neighboring Rwanda, and several hundred thousand people fled to Zaire. Mobutu sent government troops to the eastern regions of the country to expel refugees from there, and at the same time the Tutsi people (in 1996, these people were ordered to leave the country). These actions caused widespread discontent in the country, and in October 1996 the Tutsis rebelled against the Mobutu regime. Together with other rebels, they united in the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo. The organization was headed by Laurent Kabila, supported by the governments of Uganda and Rwanda.

Government troops could do nothing to oppose the rebels, and in May 1997, opposition troops entered Kinshasa. Mobutu fled the country, again renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

This was the beginning of the so-called Great African War, which involved more than twenty armed groups representing nine African states. More than 5 million people died in it.

Kabila, who came to power in the DRC with the help of the Rwandans, turned out to be not a puppet at all, but a completely independent political figure. He refused to dance to the tune of the Rwandans and declared himself a Marxist and follower of Mao Zedong. Having removed his Tutsi “friends” from the government, Kabila received in response a rebellion of the two best formations of the new DRC army. On August 2, 1998, the 10th and 12th infantry brigades rebelled in the country. In addition to this, fighting broke out in Kinshasa, where Tutsi militants flatly refused to disarm.

On August 4, Colonel James Kabarere (Tutsi by origin) hijacked a passenger plane and, together with his followers, flew it to the city of Quitona (the rear of the DRC government troops). Here he teamed up with the frustrated fighters of Mobutu's army and opened a Second Front against Kabila. The rebels captured the ports of Bas-Congo and took control of the Iga Falls hydroelectric dam.

Kabila scratched his black turnip and turned to his Angolan comrades for help. On August 23, 1998, Angola entered the conflict, throwing tank columns into battle. On August 31, Cabarere's forces were destroyed. The few surviving rebels retreated into friendly UNITA territory. To the heap, Zimbabwe (a friend of the Russian Federation in Africa, where salaries are paid in millions of Zimbabwean dollars) joined the carnage, which transferred 11 thousand soldiers to the DRC; and Chad, on whose side Libyan mercenaries fought.

Laurent Kabila

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It is worth noting that the 140 thousand forces of the DRC were demoralized by the events taking place. Of all this crowd of people, no more than 20,000 people supported Kabila. The rest fled into the jungle, settled in villages with tanks and avoided hostilities. The most unstable ones raised another uprising and formed the RCD (Congolese Rally for Democracy or Congolese Movement for Democracy). In October 1998, the rebel situation became so critical that Rwanda intervened in the bloody conflict. Kindu fell under the blows of the Rwandan army. At the same time, the rebels actively used satellite phones and confidently escaped from government artillery strikes, using electronic intelligence systems.

Beginning in the fall of 1998, Zimbabwe began to use Mi-35s in combat, which carried out attacks from the Thornhill base and, apparently, were controlled by Russian military specialists. Angola threw Su-25s purchased from Ukraine into battle. It would seem that these forces were enough to grind the rebels into powder, but that was not the case. The Tutsi and RCD prepared well for the war, acquired a significant number of MANPADS and anti-aircraft guns, and then began to clear the skies of enemy vehicles. On the other hand, the rebels failed to create their own air force. The infamous Viktor Bout managed to form an air bridge consisting of several transport vehicles. With the help of the air bridge, Rwanda began to transfer its own military units to the Congo.

It is worth noting that at the end of 1998, the rebels began to shoot down civilian aircraft landing on the territory of the DRC. For example, in December 1998, a Boeing 727-100 of Congo Airlines was shot down by a MANPADS. The rocket hit the engine, after which the plane caught fire and crashed into the jungle.

By the end of 1999, the Great African War was reduced to a confrontation between the DRC, Angola, Namibia, Chad and Zimbabwe against Rwanda and Uganda.

After the end of the rainy season, the rebels formed three resistance fronts and went on the offensive against government forces. However, the rebels were unable to maintain unity in their ranks. In August 1999, the armed forces of Uganda and Rwanda clashed with each other, unable to divide the Kisagani diamond mines. Less than a week had passed before the rebels forgot about the DRC troops and began selflessly dividing diamonds (that is, killing each other with Kalash guns, tanks and self-propelled guns).

In November, large-scale civil strife subsided and the rebels launched a second wave of offensive. The city of Basankusu came under siege. The Zimbabwean garrison defending the city was cut off from allied units and was supplied by air. The surprising thing is that the rebels were never able to take the city. There was not enough strength for the final assault, Basankus remained under the control of government troops.

A year later, in the fall of 2000, Kabila’s government troops (in alliance with the Zimbabwean army), using aircraft, tanks and cannon artillery, threw out the rebels from Katanga and recaptured the vast majority of the captured cities. In December, hostilities were suspended. An agreement was signed in Harare to create a ten-mile security zone along the front line and station UN observers in it.

During 2001–2002 the regional balance of power did not change. The opponents, tired of the bloody war, exchanged sluggish blows. On July 20, 2002, Joseph Kabila and Rwandan President Paul Kagame signed a peace agreement in Pretoria. In accordance with it, the 20,000-strong contingent of the Rwandan army was withdrawn from the DRC, all Tutsi organizations on the territory of the DRC were officially recognized, and the Hutu armed forces were disarmed. On September 27, 2002, Rwanda began withdrawing its first units from the territory of the DRC. The rest of the conflict participants followed her.
However, in the Congo itself the situation changed in the most tragic way. On January 16, 2001, an assassin's bullet struck DRC President Laurent Kabila. The Congolese government is still hiding the circumstances of his death from the public. According to the most popular version, the reason for the murder was a conflict between Kabila and the deputy. Minister of Defense of the Congo - Kayabe.

The military decided to carry out a coup d'état after it became known that President Kabila had instructed his son to arrest Kayambe. The deputy, along with several other senior military officials, went to Kabila's residence. There Kayambe pulled out a pistol and shot the president 3 times. As a result of the ensuing shootout, the president was killed, Kabila's son Joseph and three of the president's guards were injured. Kayambe was destroyed on the spot. The fate of his assistants is unknown. All are listed as MIA, although most likely they were killed long ago.
Kabila's son Joseph became the new president of the Congo.

In May 2003, civil war began between the Congolese Hema and Lendu tribes. At the same time, 700 UN troops found themselves in the very center of the carnage, who had to withstand attacks coming from both sides of the conflict. The French looked at what was happening, and drove 10 Mirage fighter-bombers to neighboring Uganda. The conflict between the tribes was extinguished only after France gave the combatants an ultimatum (either the conflict ends, or French aircraft begin bombing enemy positions). The conditions of the ultimatum were fulfilled.

The Great African War finally ended on June 30, 2003. On this day, in Kinshasa, the rebels and the new President of the DRC, Joseph Kabila, signed a peace agreement, sharing power. The headquarters of the armed forces and the navy remained under the control of the president, while the rebel leaders headed the ground forces and the air force. The country was divided into 10 military districts, transferring them to the control of the leaders of the main groups.

The large-scale African war ended in victory for government forces. However, peace never came to the Congo as the Congolese Ituri tribes declared war on the United Nations (MONUC mission), leading to another massacre.

It is worth noting that the Ituri used “small war” tactics - they mined roads and raided checkpoints and patrols. The UN forces crushed the rebels with aircraft, tanks and artillery. In 2003, the UN conducted a series of major military operations, as a result of which many rebel camps were destroyed, and Ituri leaders were sent to the next world. In June 2004, Tutsis launched an anti-government rebellion in South and North Kivu. The next leader of the irreconcilables was Colonel Laurent Nkunda (a former comrade-in-arms of Kabila Sr.). Nkunda founded the National Congress for the Defense of Tutsi Peoples (abbreviated as CNDP). The fighting of the DRC army against the rebel colonel lasted for five years. Moreover, by 2007, five rebel brigades were under the control of Nkunda.

When Nkunda drove the DRC forces out of the Virunga National Park, the UN sheep again came to Kabila's aid (the so-called Battle of Goma). The rebel onslaught was stopped by a furious attack from "white" tanks and helicopters. It is worth noting that for several days the combatants fought on equal terms. The rebels actively destroyed UN equipment and even took control of two cities. At some point, the UN field commanders decided “That’s it! Enough!" and used multiple launch rocket systems and cannon artillery in battles. It was then that Nkunda’s forces came to a natural end. On 22 January 2009, Laurent Nkunda was arrested during a joint military operation between the Congolese and Rwandan armies after escaping to Rwanda.

Colonel Laurent Nkunda

Currently, the conflict in the DRC continues. The government of the country, with the support of UN forces, is waging war against a wide variety of rebels who control not only remote parts of the country, but are also trying to attack large cities and make forays into the capital of the Democratic State. For example, at the end of 2013, the rebels tried to take control of the capital’s airport.

It is worth mentioning in a separate paragraph about the uprising of the M23 group, which included former soldiers of the army of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The uprising began in April 2012 in the east of the country. In November of the same year, the rebels managed to capture the city of Goma on the border with Rwanda, but were soon driven out by government forces. During the conflict between the central government and M23, several tens of thousands of people died in the country, more than 800 thousand people were forced to leave their homes.

In October 2013, the DRC authorities announced the complete victory of M23. However, this victory is local in nature, since the border provinces are controlled by various bandit groups and mercenary detachments, which are in no way incorporated into the vertical of Congolese power. The next amnesty period (followed by the surrender of weapons) expired for the Congolese rebels in March 2014. Naturally, no one handed over their weapons (there were no idiots on the border). Thus, the conflict that began 17 years ago does not seem to end, which means that the battle for the Congo is still ongoing.

Colonel Sultani Makenga, rebel leader from M23.

These are soldiers of the French Foreign Legion patrolling the village market. They don’t wear hats out of special “caste” chic...

These are wounds left by a panga - a wide and heavy knife, a local version of the machete.

And here is the panga itself.

This time the panga was used as a cutting knife...

But sometimes there are too many marauders, inevitable quarrels over food, who will get the “roast” today:

Many corpses, burned in fires, after battles with rebels, Simbu, simply marauders and bandits, are often missing some parts of the body. Please note that the female burnt corpse is missing both feet - most likely they were cut off before the fire. The arm and part of the sternum come after.

And this is already a whole caravan, recaptured by a government unit from the Simbu... They were supposed to be eaten.

However, not only the Simbu and the rebels, but also regular army units are engaged in looting and robbing the local population. Both our own and those who came to the territory of the DRC from Rwanda, Angola, etc. As well as private armies consisting of mercenaries. There are many Europeans among them...

At the end of the 19th century, King Leopold II of Belgium, whose power in his homeland was severely limited, cunningly ensured that the huge African colony of the Congo became his property. In governing this country, this monarch of one of the most advanced civilized and democratic countries showed himself to be a terrible tyrant. Under the cover of the spread of civilization and Christianity, terrible crimes were committed there against the black population, about which nothing was known in the civilized world.

King businessman

This is what Leopold II was nicknamed in his homeland. He reigned in 1865. Under him, universal suffrage appeared in the country, and secondary education became available to everyone. But the Belgians owe this not to the king, but to parliament. Leopold's power was severely limited by parliament, so he languished with his hands tied and constantly tried to find ways to become more influential. Therefore, one of the main directions of his activity was colonialism.

In the 1870s and 1880s, he obtained permission from the world community for Belgium to colonize the vast territories of modern Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. It was these three territories that remained undeveloped by the European powers by that time.

In the mid-1880s, with his support, commercial expeditions were sent there. They acted very vilely, in the spirit of the conquistadors who conquered America. Tribal leaders, in exchange for cheap gifts, signed documents according to which all the property of their tribe was transferred to the ownership of the Europeans, and the tribes were obliged to provide them with labor.

Needless to say, the leaders in loincloths did not understand a word in these papers, and the very conceptual concept of “document” did not exist for them. As a result, Leopold took possession of 2 million square kilometers (that is, 76 Belgium) in Central and Southern Africa. Moreover, these territories became his personal possession, and not the possession of Belgium. King Leopold II began the merciless exploitation of these lands and the peoples living on them.

Free unfree state

Leopold named these territories the Congo Free State. The citizens of this “free” state became, in essence, slaves of the European colonialists.

Alexandra Rodriguez in her “Modern History of Asia and Africa” writes that the lands of the Congo were the property of Leopold, but he granted private companies broad rights to use them, which even included judicial functions and tax collection. In pursuit of 300% profit, as Marx said, capital is ready to do anything - and the Belgian Congo is perhaps the best illustration of this moral law. Nowhere in colonial Africa were the natives so disenfranchised and unhappy.

The main way to pump money out of this land was the extraction of rubber. The Congolese were forcibly herded to plantations and industries, and they were punished for every offense. The terrible method of stimulating labor that the Belgians used went down in history: Africans were shot for failure to fulfill an individual plan. But the cartridges to the guards of the concentration camp plantations - it was called force publique, that is, “social forces”, were issued with the requirement of a report on their consumption, so that the soldiers would not sell them to local hunters. Soon, the method of keeping such records became the severed hands of slaves, who surrendered to their superiors as proof that the cartridge was well spent.

In addition to brutal exploitation, the Europeans brutally suppressed any protests: as soon as one African resisted the order of his colonial superior, his entire village was destroyed as punishment.

In the “New History of Colonial and Dependent Countries” by Soviet historians Rostovsky, Reisner, Kara-Murza and Rubtsov, we find references to such punishments: “there are known cases when, for failure to pay tribute in kind, overseers herded the “guilty” along with their wives and children into some room and, locking them there, they burned them alive. Quite often, tribute collectors took away their wives and property from the arrears.”

The end of atrocities and their results

Such cruel treatment of innocent people led to the fact that the country's population decreased in less than 30 years, according to various estimates by 3-10 million, which amounted to up to half the population. Thus, according to the Belgian Society for the Protection of Natives, out of 20 million Congolese in 1884, in 1919 only 10 remained.

In the first years of the 20th century, the European public began to pay attention to these crimes and demand an investigation. Under pressure from Great Britain, Leopold II sent a commission to the country in 1902. Here are excerpts from the testimonies of Congolese people that were collected by the commission:

“Child: We all ran into the forest - me, mother, grandmother and sister. The soldiers killed a lot of our people. Suddenly they noticed my mother’s head in the bushes and ran up to us, grabbed my mother, grandmother, sister and one stranger’s child, smaller than us. Everyone wanted to marry my mother and argued among themselves, and in the end they decided to kill her. They shot her in the stomach, she fell, and I cried so terribly when I saw it - now I had neither a mother nor a grandmother, I was left alone. They were killed before my eyes.

A native girl reports: On the way, the soldiers noticed a child and headed towards him with the intention of killing him; the child laughed, then the soldier swung and hit him with the butt of his gun, and then cut off his head. The next day they killed my half-sister, cutting off her head, arms and legs, on which she had bracelets. Then they caught my other sister and sold her to the U-U tribe. Now she has become a slave."

Europe was shocked by this treatment of the local population. Under public pressure after the publication of the results of the commission’s work in the Congo, life for the aborigines became significantly easier. The labor tax was replaced by a monetary tax, and the number of compulsory days of labor for the state - essentially corvee - was reduced to 60 per year.

In 1908, Leopold, under pressure from liberals and socialists in parliament, got rid of the Congo as personal property, but even then he did not fail to turn it to personal gain. He sold the Congo to the Belgian state itself, i.e., in fact, made it an ordinary colony.

However, he no longer needed it much: thanks to the merciless exploitation of Africans, he became one of the richest people in the world. But such bloody wealth also made him the most hated man of his time. Which, however, did not stop their family from continuing to rule Belgium and still do so: the great-grandfather of the current King of Belgium, Philip, is the nephew of Leopold II.

Born in 1835, Prince Leopold did not escape the rigors of his father's upbringing. He grew up as a quiet and disciplined child, then became a sensible and timid young man, completely suppressed by the authority of his great parent. The father, by a willful decision, married his 18-year-old son to the Austrian princess Maria Henrietta. The general impression of the international community was not in favor of the young prince: the world found that the young man was not royally prudent and prudent like an old man. In addition, the heir to the Belgian throne surprised his contemporaries with the size of his nose. One German baron joked around the salons that Leopold Jr.’s nose “casts a shadow like Mount Athos,” and Disraeli, who later became the British Prime Minister, joked that “it was a nose like that of a prince from a fairy tale who was cursed by an evil fairy.” .

The prince himself, having married, finally felt free from his father’s house and set out to travel around Europe. Leopold used the honeymoon rationally, showing his young wife who was boss in the family: when Maria Henrietta expressed a desire to listen to the serenade of the Venetian gondolier again, there was a harsh refusal. Since then, his wife no longer bothered him.

Leopold traveled to almost all European countries, visited Egypt, China and British India, where he showed interest not only in local attractions, but also in the economy. Of all the sciences, the young man was most interested in those related to commerce, and above all statistics. Leopold quickly appreciated the benefits of colonial trade. Returning to Belgium from Greece, the prince presented the prime minister with a souvenir from the Acropolis - a piece of marble on which, by his order, were engraved the words: “Belgium must have colonies.”

The prince repeatedly spoke in the Senate with a proposal to begin overseas expansion, convincing his compatriots to “acquire lands overseas while there is such a chance,” but the Belgians did not care about what was outside their small homeland, and Leopold’s calls had no effect.

In 1865, Leopold I died and the heir ascended to the throne. Leopold II's main love was money, which he himself periodically reminded, declaring, for example, that “only money deserves the Kingdom of Heaven.” Leopold II began his long reign by increasing the royal allowance from 2.6 million to 3.3 million gold francs. The king knew how to account for his money and invested it profitably in real estate and securities, and also had interests in Syria, Albania and Morocco. Leopold was quite pleased with his investments and even granted his financial advisor, banker Empen, a tram concession in Antwerp and the title of baron.

In the business world, the Belgian monarch earned an impeccable reputation, which allowed him to do business with the largest businessmen of the time, including John Morgan himself, with whom he jointly financed the construction of the railway in China. However, among the august persons of Europe, it was not customary to monitor finances, and therefore fellow crown bearers considered Leopold II to be a corrupt money dealer and a swindler. Thus, the Emperor of Austria-Hungary Franz Joseph considered Leopold “an exceptionally bad person,” and the wife of the German Kaiser Wilhelm II dissuaded her husband from participating in the business enterprises of the Belgian king, believing that thereby Wilhelm could destroy his Christian soul.

The soul of Leopold himself languished in anticipation of real big things, which were difficult to find in small, cozy Belgium. The king was frankly bored in his palace in Ostend, indulging in growing tropical fruits in luxurious greenhouses. While Maria Henrietta rode a pony along the coastal dunes, Leopold spent a long time looking at the sea, beyond which, in his opinion, lay real wealth and which was of no interest to his subjects.

African Freedom Fighter

Leopold had learned from his youth the simple idea that colonial trade always yielded higher profits than any other, and the stubborn reluctance of the Belgian government to do anything overseas could not but upset him. When a republic was established in Spain during another coup, Leopold, at his own peril and risk, tried to lease the Spanish Philippines. The king's emissaries went to Madrid, generously distributing bribes to the republican ministers, and the price was almost agreed upon, but then the republic was replaced by a monarchy, and they had to forget about the Philippines. Leopold began testing the waters in Paris, hoping to acquire some overseas concessions through the French Ministry of Colonies. A golden rain of bribes rained down on French officials, the king's people organized orgies with expensive wines and luxurious women for the Parisian life-lovers, but the French did not give in to temptation: they took bribes, but never gave colonies. The Dutch and Portuguese also showed intractability, but Leopold was not going to despair. “Now I want to see if something can be done in Africa,” the king wrote to his minister. And it soon became clear that much could be done there.

In 1876, very tanned people with courageous faces and well-developed muscles began to flock to Brussels from all over Europe. On September 12, Leopold II solemnly opened the International African Conference, the participants of which were in one way or another connected with the study of the Dark Continent. The King thanked those present for their contribution to the development of science and personally presented all the pioneers with the Leopold Cross. The Belgian monarch announced that he intended to crack down on the slave trade in Central Africa, as well as open this region to world trade, introduce the natives to the benefits of civilization and spread the light of Christianity to them. At the conference, the African International Association was founded, headed by Leopold II, which was supposed to begin the implementation of a noble plan with the money of philanthropists. There were few of the latter, and a year later the association’s activities almost came to naught, since only 44 thousand francs were collected from all over Europe - less than the costs of the conference itself. But the association fulfilled its main task: Leopold now had at his disposal a “legal entity” that was in no way connected with Belgium and was not subordinate to the Brussels government.

A worthy goal for the association appeared in 1877, when an English-American, Henry Stanley, discovered the sources of the Congo River. The following year, the first meeting of shareholders of a new commercial enterprise, the Committee for the Study of the Upper Congo, was held at Leopold's palace, which, despite its scientific name, was supposed to profit from trade with the newly discovered territories. The king was not present at the meeting in person, but his money made up a quarter of the total authorized capital of the company. The company was not Belgian, since many shareholders were foreigners. Soon the society began to develop the mouth of the Congo, establishing trading posts and building roads, and the flag of the International African Association fluttered over the new colony. Colonization was led by Stanley, who was hired by Leopold. Already at the next meeting of shareholders, all those present were required to either invest again or get the money back. Since there was no dream of profit in the foreseeable future, all shareholders except the king chose to leave the business. Now Leopold was the sole owner of vast territories, and no one could demand an account from him, since he participated in the enterprise as a private individual.

However, Belgium's powerful neighbors were concerned that vast territories that could theoretically contain enormous wealth were being taken away from under their noses. Leopold had to show miracles of diplomatic art to preserve his acquisition. Thus, he promised France that if his enterprise suffered a commercial failure, then priority in the purchase of the Congo would belong to Paris. True, he did not hide this from Germany and England, which could not make them happy. But in the USA, the king created an influential lobbying group. American President Chester Arthur was treated by large businessman Henry Sandford, associated with Leopold, and congressmen were convinced by Senator John Morgan from Alabama, who supported the colonization of Africa, because he dreamed of sending all American blacks there. In addition, Leopold promised to establish free trade in the new territories. Finally, for humanistic public opinion, he reserved a project for creating a “republican confederation of free blacks,” which was supposed to turn into a “powerful black state.” As a result, the world community was forced to recognize the existence of the “Congo Free State” in Africa, moving towards the triumph of progress under the leadership of the Belgian king.

Meanwhile, although colonization was in full swing, the enterprise continued to bring nothing but losses to Leopold. Railways were built in the Congo, steamships descended on the river, white and black mercenaries convinced local leaders to swear allegiance to the new master, demanded salaries, and the king paid for all this from his own pocket. During the first ten years of his colonial adventures, Leopold invested about 20 million francs in the business, receiving nothing but new plant specimens for his greenhouses. In the Congo, Leopold put at stake not only his money, but also his prestige, as well as the prestige of his state, and therefore had a chance of losing both wealth and the crown.

“You owe it all to rubber prices.”

And in the last decade of the 19th century, new technologies came to the aid of the king. Humanity has realized that driving a vehicle equipped with rubber tires is much more pleasant than driving without them. Rubber could be obtained from rubber, which was extracted from trees growing in hot countries. There were many such trees in the Congo; all that remained was to extract rubber from them and deliver it to Europe. The colony began to bring Leopold huge income. All the land of the Free State was considered the property of the Belgian monarch, and therefore free trade could be forgotten. The king himself distributed concessions to Belgian companies and received considerable and constant income from their activities. Thus, the Abir company earned 2.6 million francs in 1899, investing 1 million in the business; in 1900 it already earned 4.7 million francs. Societe Anversoise averaged 150% profit annually, while Comptoir Commercial Congolais averaged more than 50%. In addition, the king had his own territory in Africa, where rubber was collected only for him.

Leopold enjoyed his immense wealth with truly royal panache. The Belgian sovereign was a great gourmet and began every day with a thoughtful review of the multi-page menu of the palace cook, crossing out those dishes that he did not want that day and adding those he wanted. Legends and anecdotes were made about his love affairs. There were rumors that throughout Europe the king had given birth to a whole crowd of bastards, and Leopold himself did not try to fight these rumors. His mistresses rode openly in royal carriages with coats of arms, and one of them even earned the nickname “Queen of the Congo.”

However, the Belgians' tolerance for the king's pranks once failed. The priest of the Ostend church, Father Le Curé, promised his parishioners that he would use his invitation to dinner with the king for moral teaching, since everyone in the city knew that another royal passion lived in the palace. During dinner, the priest gathered his courage and squeezed out: “There was a rumor that Your Majesty has a mistress.” “And you believed this?” Leopold asked. “They told me the same thing about you yesterday, but I didn’t believe it.” The incident was over.

In the life of the king-businessman, there was also a place for genuine passion. Leopold did not like music, but went to ballets and operas mainly to meet actresses backstage. Once in Paris, he saw the dancer Cleo de Merode on stage, who shocked his imagination. Soon the king personally came to her with a huge bouquet of roses. Cleo was 38 years younger than Leopold, considered one of the first beauties of France and became one of the first fashion models in history: her photographs in exotic outfits adorned postcards and magazine pages. News of the whirlwind romance quickly spread across Paris, and sarcastic Parisians were quick to dub the Belgian king Cleopold. In November 1902, Russian newspapers even wrote that “according to news from Brussels, King Leopold II intends to abdicate the throne and enter into a morganatic marriage with the Parisian ballerina Cleo de Merode.” However, it did not come to the point of abdication, but Paris gained something from the royal passion. When Leopold decided to make some valuable gift to France, Cleo gave him the idea of ​​​​giving Paris a metro. And in 1900, the Paris metro line was opened, built with the money of the Belgian monarch.

Rubber income allowed Leopold to give free rein to his architectural fantasies. The king enthusiastically rebuilt Belgian cities and built his favorite palace in Ostend. The Crown Bearer had not spared money on construction before: at one time a Japanese pagoda and a copy of an Italian Renaissance fountain appeared in his park. Now Leopold came up with the idea of ​​​​combining a temple with a greenhouse. In his home church, exotic plants bloomed under a glass dome, and birds of paradise flew over the altar during the service. The God-fearing monarch himself attended masses with his beloved terrier in his arms. However, the zealous monarch was going to make a profit from his quirks, planning to turn Ostend into a paid resort for the crowned heads of Europe. However, he did not live to see this plan implemented.

Finally, Leopold still enjoyed traveling. He had at his disposal a special royal train, which was always parked so that the monarch could urgently leave for any country in Europe. The invention of the automobile further increased the king's freedom of movement. Leopold learned to drive a car when he was about 70 years old, and since then he often drove around Belgium and neighboring countries at top speed, giving rides to his mistresses. Cars became one of the last hobbies of his life. Leopold regularly bought all the technical innovations, and devoted his last visit to Paris to the purchase of new cars at the automobile exhibition taking place in the city.

Revenues from the Congo poured into the Belgian economy, contributing in every possible way to its prosperity. One of the grateful compatriots, in a speech on the occasion of the opening of an exhibition dedicated to the Congo in Antwerp, said, turning to the monarch, that Belgium owes its prosperity solely to the genius of His Majesty, to which Leopold replied: “You owe all this to the prices of rubber.”

"Why are the corpses so mangled?"

Meanwhile, someone had to extract the rubber, and it was the local residents of the Congo. Some journalists drew attention to the fact that ships loaded with rubber come from the Congo, and back to Africa they take only weapons and ammunition. Since it was difficult to imagine blacks collecting rubber for Belgian francs, the journalist suggested that slave labor was used in the Free State.

There were reports in the press from missionaries that testified that Congolese were forced to work at gunpoint, and those who shied away from labor had their hands cut off. In 1902, Joseph Conrad’s novel “Heart of Darkness” was published, in which the writer, who himself had recently sailed on a steamboat on the Congo River, depicted the image of the Belgian colonialist Kurtz, who decorated his home with native skulls, while talking about progress and civilization. Later, the plot of "Heart of Darkness" formed the basis of Francis Coppola's famous film "Apocalypse Now", where the Congo River turned into an unnamed Vietnamese river, and the maniac Kurtz - into the crazy American Colonel Curts. The novel aroused great interest, and the public became seriously concerned about the state of affairs in the colony.

Leopold also became worried - and hired the German banker Ludwig von Steub to organize a retaliatory PR campaign. However, for some reason, the king soon lost faith in von Steube and stopped financing him, for which the offended German made public his correspondence with Leopold, which talked about bribing journalists and paying for commissioned materials in newspapers.

Meanwhile, more and more evidence came from the Congo about the atrocities of the army recruited from the natives under the name “Public Forces” (Force Publique) and the abuses of the colonial administration. The press reported the story of missionary Shepard, who had the pleasure of communicating with the chief of the Zapo-Zapov tribe shortly after this tribe, in agreement with royal officials, carried out a punitive raid on a settlement whose inhabitants had refused to collect rubber. The leader proudly showed the missionary the pile of remains of his enemies. "Why are the corpses so mangled?" - Shepard asked. “My people ate them,” answered the supreme zapo-zap. Off to the side, the cannibals smoked the severed hands of their enemies to present them to Belgian officials as proof of a job well done.

Many prominent public figures and writers joined the international movement for reform in the Congo, including Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain, who began to write mocking pamphlets against Leopold. Scientific and technological progress was also on the side of the king’s opponents. The bestsellers of the early 20th century were hand-held cameras from Kodak, which missionaries were quick to equip themselves with. Photos of Congolese men with their hands cut off and mutilated by Forces Socialists have shocked Europe. Thus, the king of Belgium turned into a fiend in the eyes of the whole world, and his reputation as a libertine and the appearance of an operetta villain with a predatory nose and a huge beard contributed a lot to this.

Leopold was not pleased with the international situation either. In 1904, the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, during a personal meeting, offered him several French provinces if Belgium agreed to help Germany in a future war. In case of refusal, the Kaiser promised to attack Belgium itself. Leopold was so stunned by this conversation that he showed up to the parade wearing his cap backwards.

The monarch’s health also began to fail. In his old age, Leopold acquired some oddities: he spoke about himself exclusively in the third person and wrapped his beard in a special leather case to protect it from germs.

In 1908, under international pressure, but for considerable compensation, Leopold ceded the Congo to his own kingdom, which stopped the flow of criticism against him. On December 17, 1909, Leopold II died, having signed the law on universal conscription three days before his death, which greatly annoyed William II when he attacked France through the territory of Belgium in 1914.
During his long life, the king-entrepreneur managed to amass truly royal capital, which, however, cost the lives of approximately 10 million residents of the Congo, and also became the most unpopular monarch in the history of Belgium.

KIRILL NOVIKOV

http://kommersant.ru/doc/568848?971427d8

In the second half of the 19th century, progressive European powers decided to introduce civilization to the indigenous African population, and seriously began to develop the “dark continent”. It was under this pretext that groups of European and American scientists and researchers were sent to Africa, and ordinary people thought exactly the same. In fact, no one pursued good goals; the capitalists needed resources, and they got them.

In his homeland, Leopold II is known as a great monarch who developed the economy of his country. In fact, the prosperity of Belgium and the fortune of the king ensured the oppression of the inhabitants of the Congo. In 1884-1885, the Congo Free State was created, headed by the King of Belgium. A small European state began to control a territory 76 times larger than its own. Rubber trees were of particular value in the Congo, and the demand for rubber increased greatly at the end of the 19th century.

Leopold introduced cruel laws in the country obliging local residents to work in rubber extraction. Production standards were established, to achieve which it was necessary to work 14–16 hours a day. Failure to comply with the standard was punishable, and refusal to work was sometimes punishable by death. At times, entire villages were even destroyed as a warning to others. The situation in the country was controlled by the so-called Social Forces. These organizations were headed by former military men from Europe, who hired thugs from all over Africa for their “work.” It was they who punished and executed the guilty people of the Congo Free State, which was a huge colony of slaves.

A particularly common punishment was the cutting off of hands and various mutilations. The cartridges were saved in case of uprisings. In 10 years, rubber exports increased from 81 tons to 6,000 tons in 1901. The local population was subject to exorbitant taxes, however, this was not enough for the Belgian king. He became a real millionaire, while in the Congo people were dying from epidemics, famine and the actions of the people subordinate to him. In total, between 1884 and 1908, about 10 million local residents died in the Congo.

It took several years to draw the attention of the public and world powers to the situation in the Congo. In 1908, Leopold was removed from power, but he destroyed traces of his atrocities. For many years, only a few knew about the Congolese genocide, and in Belgium itself there was even a monument to “the king from the grateful inhabitants of the Congo.” In 2004, a group of activists cut off the hand of a Congolese sculpture so that no one would forget the price at which Belgium achieved economic success.

In the photo, a man looks at the severed arm and leg of his five-year-old daughter, who was killed by employees of the Anglo-Belgian Rubber Company as punishment for a poorly done job collecting rubber. Congo, 1900

Leopold II (King of Belgium)