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: : Second point- technically, it wasn't the "Belgians", it was King Leopold. The Congo was his private estate, not the public property of Belgium. This should convince anybody of the wonders that private enterprise can bring about (more sarcasm). : Thanks for the correction, though it is awful to know. Who did Leopold have execute these horrors? Also why is this event so hushed up compared to the nazi holocaust? My Belgian friends don't seem to know much of this themselves.
Actually, for honetsy's sake, I should add one thing. Because the crimes took place in an African colony 100 years ago, records were not good, and as such there is an unbelievable amount of uncertainty in the actual statistics. The high estimate of 21.5 million deaths is over 800 times - no joke- the low estimate of 25,000 given by a conservative anti-communist scholar. Even 25,000 deatsh is not small potatoes, out of a total population of only 15 to 30 million- it's teh equivalent, in modern America, of having a city of 250,000 completely wiped out.
The estimate that I believe, 10 million, is clsoe to the median of the high and low estimates; it was published by a recent scholar named Adam Hochschild who did an exhaustive study, but has been floating aroudn before then. King leopold was using teh avst territory as a source of ivory and minerals, and he used the local population as slave labor; whenever they malingered or resisted they would be killed. Some officials were given a quota of people to kill, and they would sometiems save bullets by merely chopping off the victims' hands instead- teh hands would be used as proof that a man had been killed. Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness" was based largely on his own experience in the Belgian Congo and on the real-life atrocities therein.
I don't know why they ahven't been as publicized as teh nazi holocaust, but I have 3 guesses. 1) THEY HAPPENED 100 years ago, not 50; 2) they didn't happen in Europe, and as the press is largely dominated by Europeans and Americans, there is naturally a little more interest in things that happen in Europe 3) unlike the Holocaust, tehse people were not deliberately targeted for irremediable execution due to teh content of their bloodlines; the killings were often committed as punishment for "laziness", etc. or to set an example, whereas in contrats teh Jews were hunted down and murdered simply because of who they were. As such, the Nazi holocaust is pretty much unique in history, with the exception maybe of crimes like the elimination of teh Tasmanians or some Indian tribes.
