orup:
A father stares at the hands of his five year-old daughter, which were severed as a punishment for having harvested too little rubber.
According to King Leopold’s Ghost, a book on Belgian rule in the Congo, the man’s name was Nsala and his daughter’s was Boali. They were from the district of Wala, and were victims of the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company militia. This would have happened sometime in the early 1900s, when rubber was in highest demand and the brutality was at its worst.
I really recommend King Leopold’s Ghost; it goes into Belgian atrocities in the Congo with great depth and care.
