Friday, August 11, 2006

Shame on us



"DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO Upper Congo
Swedish missionary and a young boy mutilated by a rubber sentry in the employ of a 'concessionnaire' company in the Upper Congo. The Belgian Congo under King Leopold II employed mass forced labour of the indigenous population to extract rubber from the jungle. As the demand for rubber grew King Leopold's private army of 16,000 mercenaries were given leave to use any method to coerce the population into meeting quotas, including random killing, mutilation, village burning, starvation and hostage taking. This photograph forms part of the Harris lantern slide collection. Alice Seeley Harris and her husband John Harris were missionaries in the Congo in the early 1900s. They produced a collection of images documenting the horrific abuses of the indigenous people of the Congo by King Leopold II's regime. Their photographs formed part of what was probably the first orchestrated multimedia campaign against widespread human rights abuses."
Credit to Panos Pictures

Why does horror persist in Africa. 4 million dead in the Congo over the last 10 years, where is the outrage? Why is this still happening?

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