The Most Painful Proof
Review of "Congo: White King, Red Rubber,
Black Death"
Volume 75, Number 42
| October 20 - 26,
2005FILMCONGO:
WHITE KING, RED RUBBER, BLACK
DEATHDirected by Peter
Bate Distributed by Art Mattan
Productions Opens Oct,
21 Quad
CinemasPeter
Bate’s film about the earlier colonial era in the Congo under
Belgium’s King Léopold II brutally lays bare a tradition of
atrocity.The Most Painful
Proof“Congo”
probes royal, colonial atrocities, and a heritage of
denialBy SETH J.
BOOKEY“Congo: White King,
Red Rubber, Black Death” presents a meticulous chronicle of the systematic
use of fear, human rights abuses, and atrocities to force a nation of 20 million
Africans into the service of King Léopold II. Unlike other colonizations,
where land and natural resources were appropriated, the Congo was actually the
personal property of King Léopold II from 1885 to 1908. European outrage at
his widespread abuses led to him relinquishing the Congo to the nation of
Belgium as a whole.“Congo”
also illustrates how Belgium has practiced collective denial about its colonial
past despite the outrage at the turn of the century, as statues around Brussels,
some recently erected, laud the king as a philanthropist and civilizer. The
king’s descendents still sit on the Belgian throne in palaces built on
African slave labor, while Belgium utters precious little remorse or guilt, or
even acknowledgement.The sovereign of a
small country, Léopold II was desperate for a colony. After failing
elsewhere around the globe, the Congo represented his last chance, and he was
hungry for his piece of “this magnificent African
cake.”“Congo” clearly
shows Léopold II was well aware of what was happening every step of the
way. The avarice began with the king carefully studying how other Western
nations signed treaties with the indigenous peoples they would soon subjugate.
Using this cunning, Léopold signed a variety of agreements with tribal
chiefs to give him the “veil of legality” he might need later on if
accused of land grabbing. Once establishing himself as the only game in town, a
variety of edicts declared all open land his personal property; harvests and
forest produce were made state property as well. The “Congo Free
State” quickly became a forced labor camp for its 20 million inhabitants,
half of whom died within 20 years, when global demand for rubber for bicycles
and cars demanded quotas.For those who
did not meet quotas, punishments were severe. Along with deaths and mutilations
were dismemberments; smoked hands were kept as proof that the population was
being punished. In some cases, rubber collectors’ wives were held hostage
until the quota was met; this crime was so institutionalized that it was common
for records to be maintained of how long a hostage would be kept, and people
were legally authorized to become hostage takers. The women were subjected to
rapes and other sex crimes during their confinement. Many villages also went up
in flames, abandoned to this day. The camera captures some of the charred
remnants decades
later.“Congo” presents a
wealth of irrefutable evidence against Léopold and his henchmen, but
undermines its case with overbearing righteousness, like narration screeching
repeatedly, “this is an outrage.” The dramatized courtroom trial
with actors in 19th century dress reading testimony before a passive
Léopold is also overkill.Despite
this heavy-handedness, “Congo” effectively presents its case, and
calls our attention to two major players in the 20th century’s first major
human-rights activism. Edmund Morel, a journalist, used his newspaper, the
“West African Mail,” to convey Léopold’s crimes to a wide
audience. Roger Casement, Irish-born British consul to the Congo, worked to keep
his own “Congo Report” from being suppressed by the British
government. Together, their efforts made Léopold, once the richest man in
Europe, the most hated as well.Where the
camera really succeeds is in today’s Brussels, where the great palaces and
public monuments to Léopold built on his African income retain prominence.
Here, the statues of the king stand in stark contrast to those left in the
Congo, rusting away in weedy lots and junkyards.
Léopold died a year after giving up
the Congo, and the Belgians made a more traditional go of colonialism in the
wake of the sovereign’s personal ownership, exploiting gold and diamond
reserves without mutilating and killing as a policy of state. But, even when it
bowed out of colonialism altogether in 1960, Belgium left the Congo a legacy of
abuse and corruption that has blighted one of Africa’s most populous
nations with civil wars and despotism ever since.
Posted: Thu - October 20, 2005 at 11:52 PM
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Published On: Jun 20, 2009 07:03 PM
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