Pure evil

The fact that people do horrific things is no surprise to me.  What surprises me is that other men will go along with it just to gain a little power of their own.

Don't like to see bad people live so long. When good ones die so young.

That photo of the man looking at the foot and hand hacked off of his treasured baby girl will never leave me. That king was a monster.

When other colonial empires call you out for being too excessive you know you've done bad.

From the Philippines here. We dodged a bullet when he failed to buy the Philippines several times. Leopold's crime in the Congo is unforgivable, no matter how many times his country apologizes.

They were all a royal waste of time and space.

The Belgian Congo was treated with such violence it is hard to even explain...

This is horrific. Thanks for the history lesson. Every time I see that picture of the father lamenting over the severed hand and foot of his 5-year-old daughter. Any parent would find that extremely troubling 🤬😢

You forgot to mention Sir Roger Casement's report into Leopold's crimes in Congo. Resulted in international pressure against his rule.

Pure disgust. He is not even human.

People are just as brutal today, albeit maybe in a different way. Politics is ruthless, no matter what the century.

Just horrible, especially the picture of the tiny severed hand and foot in front of the father!!!

One of the people who led the fight against these atrocities was the Irishman Roger Casement, a man the British hung.

I read a book about him ten years ago. The depths of his utter depravity is just chilling. Belgium apologized to the people of the Congo decades ago. I still cannot wrap my head around it. He has an absolute monster.

Six minutes in and reading the comments, I cannot go any further. I am already disgusted. Some people are seriously disturbed and depraved.

So, the "explorer" Stanley of legend, knighted in 1899, was actually a mercenary scout for Leopold's personal ambitions and political machinations and his expeditions were so filled with brutality and slaughter that they were considered unrivaled in their cruelty.

A Good Leader serves his people. A Bad Leader expects the people to serve him.

The kid lived a privileged life even with a deformed hand. Hardly karma

A very similar story played out in the Amazon jungle of Colombia where natives were forced to harvest rubber. About the same time, 100 odd years ago.
Many tribes fled downstream to Peru, where I live now: Iquitos in Peru was built mainly on the fortunes of the Spanish rubber Barons.