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ASL00013DRC.jpg
Two British missionaries with Congolese men holding the severed hands of two men (Lingomo and Bolenge) from their village, murdered by rubber sentries from the ABIR (Anglo-Belgian India Rubber company)..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.