CONGO FREE STATE HORRORS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7695, 2 May 1903, Page 4

CONGO FREE STATE HORRORS.

BOOK THAT REVEALS THEM HAS BEEN WITHDRAWN.

KING- LEOPOLD PROTESTS AGAINST ITS CIRCULATION.

The sensation of the last London bookpublishing reason was tho appearance in March of "The Curse of Central Africa," which is the, latest contribution to the sickening history of the Congo Eree State, of whicl. Leopold, King of the Belgians, is the autocratic sovereign

Before the book appeared (says the New York "Sun"), it is stated in the introduction, the administration of the Congo* Free State applied to England for a legal injunction to prevent its publication. The preliminaries'to a Libel Act were also taken on behalf of three officials whose names in certain proof sheets had been sent to the Free State Company. These names were subsequently omitted. . Almost immediately a rumour came from Brussels that King Leopold had protested against the book to the English authorities. Whatever may be the fact, an attempt made to purchase it resulted in the discovery that the book had been withdrawn from sale. This, however, may be only temporary.

The authors of the book are Captain Guy Burrows, who resigned his commission in the Seventh Hussars to enter the service of the Congo Free State Company, to whom Mr Henry M. Stanley had recommended him, and Mr Edgar Canisine, who also spent several years in the company's service. The authors declare that they have absolute proof of everything in the book, and also of much that is not printed because the book was intended for general publication.

What is in the book, however, is sufficiently horrible and revolting. It appears that the natives have only been delivered from Arab slave drivers to become the slaves of the Free State Company. Tiie etories df cruelties practised by its officials equal and surpass the ghastliest tales from Armenia and Bulgaria.

The main trade of the Congo is in rubber. The villages are obliged to send in a certain amount, which is so great thab ib takes up the whole, time of tho people. The villagers wear round' their necks a zmc badge of servitude with their name and number. If they bring in at the fortnightly muster a quantity which the agent deems insufficient they are handed over to the soldiers, thrown on the ground and flogged with a hippopotamus hide, whip, receiving from : fifty to a hundred 1 lashes. The natives- are' reduced to this- practical slavery by the eending out of a military force, which surrounds a village ,and shoots the men and such women as try to escape. The rest are taken prisoners and sent to distant plantations, where they are practically slaves. If they escapei death in the jungle awaits th«m. When expeditions go oub to reduce fresh tribes the soldiers shoot all the men, women and children they possibly can, and burn the villages which are abandoned on their . approach. One .practice on these occasions wafe for the soldiers to cut off the left hand of all the men,, women and children killed and. bring them to the Commissary, .who "counts them to see that the soldiers had nob wasted any oartidges."

, A -photograph, which is reproSuced in thebook^ shows Major Lothaire and other Belgian officials looking at a : gruesome scene of two chiefs, who, with 400 people, had . come in to place themselves under Lpthaire's protection, being suspended from a horizontal pole by cord- from- their necks, waists and ankles in the most painful attitudes. After having been thus suspended! these two natives wero scalped. Then their shin bones were sawed through by the negro sergeant of the Belgian doctor. After this their ears, noses and lips were cut off for "the amusement of the white onlookers." This torture lasted for ah houri after which the men were throw;?, into the bush.

Stories, of similar tortures of men, women and children are ■ scattered through, the book, with accounts of the general system of administration of this vast district of 802,000 square miles, which give evidence of the existenoe of ah appalling state of affairs./ The whole conduct of affairs is a violation of the solemn _>led|ges given to the European nations wlwn^the Congo Free State was created. '-<:•'-