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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;laurentyvan, post: 2620496, member: 83327&quot;]After reading my grandsons home work the other day I learned the following (which will change my collecting habits) :</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;King Leopold II of Belgium was responsible for the deaths and mutilation of 10 million Congolese Africans during the late 1800’s. The spoils of modern day Belgium owes much to the people of the Congo River Basin.</p><p>In the 23 years (1885-1908) Leopold II ruled the Congo he massacred 10 million Africans by cutting off their hands and genitals, flogging them to death, starving them into forced labour, holding children ransom and burning villages. The ironic part of this story is that Leopold II committed these atrocities by not even setting foot in the Congo.</p><p>Such was the brutality of Leopold’s Congo that those who failed to meet the rubber quotas set by the Belgian officers, were routinely flogged with the chicote or had their hands severed (the chicotte was a whip made out of raw, sun-dried hippopotamus hide, cut into a long sharp-edged cork-screw strip. It was applied to bare buttocks, and left permanent scars. Twenty strokes of it sent victims into unconsciousness and a 100 or more strokes were often fatal. The chicotte was freely used by both Leopold&#039;s men and the French).</p><p>The Congo was a playground for sadists. Rene de Permentier was an officer in the Force Publique in the 1890s. He had all the trees and bushes around his house cut down so he could shoot at passersby. He had women prisoners sweep a courtyard. If he then found a leaf in the courtyard he would have a dozen of them beheaded. If forest paths were not well maintained he would order a child killed in the nearest village&quot;.&nbsp; -A. Hochschild</p><p><br /></p><p>-Just a short recounting of Belgium and this miserable King&#039;s misdeeds. No more 5 Franc pieces with his mug on them for me![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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